Month: August 2022

Working from home is the new normal—sort of

PNRJ current events, futurism, inequality, politics, public policy , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 28 JDN 2459820

Among people with jobs that can be done remotely, a large majority did in fact switch to doing their jobs remotely: By the end of 2020, over 70% of Americans with jobs that could be done remotely were working from home—and most of them said they didn’t want to go back.

This is actually what a lot of employers expected to happen—just not quite like this. In 2014, a third of employers predicted that the majority of their workforce would be working remotely by 2020; given the timeframe there, it required a major shock to make that happen so fast, and yet a major shock was what we had.

Working from home has carried its own challenges, but overall productivity seems to be higher working remotely (that meeting really could have been an email!). This may actually explain why output per work hour actually rose rapidly in 2020 and fell in 2022.

The COVID pandemic now isn’t so much over as becoming permanent; COVID is now being treated as an endemic infection like influenza that we don’t expect to be able to eradicate in the foreseeable future.

And likewise, remote work seems to be here to stay—sort of.

First of all, we don’t seem to be giving up office work entirely. As of the first quarter 2022, almost as many firms have partially remote work as have fully remote work, and this seems to be trending upward. A lot of firms seem to be transitioning into a “hybrid” model where employees show up to work two or three days a week. This seems to be preferred by large majorities of both workers and firms.

There is a significant downside of this: It means that the hope that remote working might finally ease the upward pressure on housing prices in major cities is largely a false one. If we were transitioning to a fully remote system, then people could live wherever they want (or can afford) and there would be no reason to move to overpriced city centers. But if you have to show up to work even one day a week, that means you need to live close enough to the office to manage that commute.

Likewise, if workers never came to the office, you could sell the office building and convert it into more housing. But if they show up even once in awhile, you need a physical place for them to go. Some firms may shrink their office space (indeed, many have—and unlike this New York Times journalist, I have a really hard time feeling bad for landlords of office buildings); but they aren’t giving it up entirely. It’s possible that firms could start trading off—you get the building on Mondays, we get it on Tuesdays—but so far this seems to be rare, and it does raise a lot of legitimate logistical and security concerns. So our global problem of office buildings that are empty, wasted space most of the time is going to get worse, not better. Manhattan will still empty out every night; it just won’t fill up as much during the day. This is honestly a major drain on our entire civilization—building and maintaining all those structures that are only used at most 1/3 of 5/7 of the time, and soon, less—and we really should stop ignoring it. No wonder our real estate is so expensive, when half of it is only used 20% of the time!

Moreover, not everyone gets to work remotely. Your job must be something that can be done remotely—something that involves dealing with information, not physical objects. That includes a wide and ever-growing range of jobs, from artists and authors to engineers and software developers—but it doesn’t include everyone. It basically means what we call “white-collar” work.

Indeed, it is largely limited to the upper-middle class. The rich never really worked anyway, though sometimes they pretend to, convincing themselves that managing a stock portfolio (that would actually grow faster if they let it sit) constitutes “work”. And the working class? By and large, they didn’t get the chance to work remotely. While 73% of workers with salaries above $200,000 worked remotely in 2020, only 12% of workers with salaries under $25,000 did, and there is a smooth trend where, across the board, the more money you make, the more likely you have been able to work remotely.

This will only intensify the divide between white-collar and blue-collar workers. They already think we don’t do “real work”; now we don’t even go to work. And while blue-collar workers are constantly complaining about contempt from white-collar elites, I think the shoe is really on the other foot. I have met very few white-collar workers who express contempt for blue-collar workers—and I have met very few blue-collar workers who don’t express anger and resentment toward white-collar workers. I keep hearing blue-collar people say that we think that they are worthless and incompetent, when they are literally the only ones ever saying that. I can’t stop saying things that I never said.

The rich and powerful may look down on them, but they look down on everyone. (Maybe they look down on blue-collar workers more? I’m not even sure about that.) I think politicians sometimes express contempt for blue-collar workers, but I don’t think this reflects what most white-collar workers feel.

And the highly-educated may express some vague sense of pity or disappointment in people who didn’t get college degrees, and sometimes even anger (especially when they do things like vote for Donald Trump), but the really vitriolic hatred is clearly in the opposite direction (indeed, I have no better explanation for how otherwise-sane people could vote for Donald Trump). And I certainly wouldn’t say that everyone needs a college degree (though I became tempted to, when so many people without college degrees voted for Donald Trump).

This really isn’t us treating them with contempt: This is them having a really severe inferiority complex. And as information technology (that white-collar work created) gives us—but not them—the privilege of staying home, that is only going to get worse.

It’s not their fault: Our culture of meritocracy puts a little bit of inferiority complex in all of us. It tells us that success and failure are our own doing, and so billionaires deserve to have everything and the poor deserve to have nothing. And blue-collar workers have absolutely internalized these attitudes: Most of them believe that poor people choose to stay on welfare forever rather than get jobs (when welfare has time limits and work requirements, so this is simply not an option—and you would know this from the Wikipedia page on TANF).

I think that what they experience as “contempt by white-collar elites” is really the pain of living in an illusory meritocracy. They were told—and they came to believe—that working hard would bring success, and they have worked very hard, and watched other people be much more successful. They assume that the rich and powerful are white-collar workers, when really they are non-workers; they are people the world was handed to on a silver platter. (What, you think George W. Bush earned his admission to Yale?)

And thus, we can shout until we are blue in the face that plumbers, bricklayers and welders are the backbone of civilization—and they are, and I absolutely mean that; our civilization would, in an almost literal sense, collapse without them—but it won’t make any difference. They’ll still feel the pain of living in a society that gave them very little and tells them that people get what they deserve.

I don’t know what to say to such people, though. When your political attitudes are based on beliefs that are objectively false, that you could know are objectively false if you simply bothered to look them up… what exactly am I supposed to say to you? How can we have a useful political conversation when half the country doesn’t even believe in fact-checking?

Honestly I wish someone had explained to them that even the most ideal meritocratic capitalism wouldn’t reward hard work. Work is a cost, not a benefit, and the whole point of technological advancement is to allow us to accomplish more with less work. The ideal capitalism would reward talent—you would succeed by accomplishing things, regardless of how much effort you put into them. People would be rich mainly because they are brilliant, not because they are hard-working. The closest thing we have to ideal capitalism right now is probably professional sports. And no amount of effort could ever possibly make me into Steph Curry.

If that isn’t the world we want to live in, so be it; let’s do something else. I did nothing to earn either my high IQ or my chronic migraines, so it really does feel unfair that the former increases my income while the latter decreases it. But the labor theory of value has always been wrong; taking more sweat or more hours to do the same thing is worse, not better. The dignity of labor consists in its accomplishment, not its effort. Sisyphus is not happy, because his work is pointless.

Honestly at this point I think our best bet is just to replace all blue-collar work with automation, thus rendering it all moot. And then maybe we can all work remotely, just pushing code patches to the robots that do everything. (And no doubt this will prove my “contempt”: I want to replace you! No, I want to replace the grueling work that you have been forced to do to make a living. I want you—the human being—to be able to do something more fun with your life, even if that’s just watching television and hanging out with friends.)

A guide to surviving the apocalypse

PNRJ current events, ethics, futurism , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 21 JDN 2459820

Some have characterized the COVID pandemic as an apocalypse, though it clearly isn’t. But a real apocalypse is certainly possible, and its low probability is offset by its extreme importance. The destruction of human civilization would be quite literally the worst thing that ever happened, and if it led to outright human extinction or civilization was never rebuilt, it could prevent a future that would have trillions if not quadrillions of happy, prosperous people.

So let’s talk about things people like you and me could do to survive such a catastrophe, and hopefully work to rebuild civilization. I’ll try to inject a somewhat light-hearted tone into this otherwise extraordinarily dark topic; we’ll see how well it works. What specifically we would want—or be able—to do will depend on the specific scenario that causes the apocalypse, so I’ll address those specifics shortly. But first, let’s talk about general stuff that should be useful in most, if not all, apocalypse scenarios.

It turns out that these general pieces of advice are also pretty good advice for much smaller-scale disasters such as fires, tornados, or earthquakes—all of which are far more likely to occur. Your top priority is to provide for the following basic needs:

1. Water: You will need water to drink. You should have some kind of stockpile of clean water; bottled water is fine but overpriced, and you’d do just as well to bottle tap water (as long as you do it before the crisis occurs and the water system goes down). Better still would be to have water filtration and purification equipment so that you can simply gather whatever water is available and make it drinkable.

2. Food: You will need nutritious, non-perishable food. Canned vegetables and beans are ideal, but you can also get a lot of benefit from dry staples such as crackers. Processed foods and candy are not as nutritious, but they do tend to keep well, so they can do in a pinch. Avoid anything that spoils quickly or requires sophisticated cooking. In the event of a disaster, you will be able to make fire and possibly run a microwave on a solar panel or portable generator—but you can’t rely on the electrical or gas mains to stay operational, and even boiling will require precious water.

3. Shelter: Depending on the disaster, your home may or may not remain standing—and even if it is standing, it may not be fit for habitation. Consider backup options for shelter: Do you have a basement? Do you own any tents? Do you know people you could move in with, if their homes survive and yours doesn’t?

4. Defense: It actually makes sense to own a gun or two in the event of a crisis. (In general it’s actually a big risk, though, so keep that in mind: the person your gun is most likely to kill is you.) Just don’t go overboard and do what we all did in Oregon Trail, stocking plenty of bullets but not enough canned food. Ammo will be hard to replace, though; your best option may actually be a gauss rifle (yes, those are real, and yes, I want one), because all they need for ammo is ferromagnetic metal of the appropriate shape and size. Then, all you need is a solar panel to charge its battery and some machine tools to convert scrap metal into ammo.

5. Community: Humans are highly social creatures, and we survive much better in groups. Get to know your neighbors. Stay in touch with friends and family. Not only will this improve your life in general, it will also give you people to reach out to if you need help during the crisis and the government is indisposed (or toppled). Having a portable radio that runs on batteries, solar power, or hand-crank operation will also be highly valuable for staying in touch with people during a crisis. (Likewise flashlights!)

Now, on to the specific scenarios. I will consider the following potential causes of apocalypse: Alien Invasion, Artificial Intelligence Uprising, Climate Disaster, Conventional War, Gamma-Ray Burst, Meteor Impact, Plague, Nuclear War, and last (and, honestly, least), Zombies.

I will rate each apocalypse by its risk level, based on its probability of occurring within the next 100 years (roughly the time I think it will take us to meaningfully colonize space and thereby change the game):

Very High: 1% or more

High: 0.1% – 1%

Moderate: 0.01% – 0.1%

Low: 0.001% – 0.01%

Very Low: 0.0001% – 0.001%

Tiny: 0.00001% – 0.0001%

Miniscule: 0.00001% or less

I will also rate your relative safety in different possible locations you might find yourself during the crisis:

Very Safe: You will probably survive.

Safe: You will likely survive if you are careful.

Dicey: You may survive, you may not. Hard to say.

Dangerous: You will likely die unless you are very careful.

Very Dangerous: You will probably die.

Hopeless: You will definitely die.

I’ll rate the following locations for each, with some explanation: City, Suburb, Rural Area, Military Base, Underground Bunker, Ship at Sea. Certain patterns will emerge—but some results may surprise you. This may tell you where to go to have the best chance of survival in the event of a disaster (though I admit bunkers are often in short supply).

All right, here goes!

Alien Invasion

Risk: Low

There are probably sapient aliens somewhere in this vast universe, maybe even some with advanced technology. But they are very unlikely to be willing to expend the enormous resources to travel across the stars just to conquer us. Then again, hey, it could happen; maybe they’re imperialists, or they have watched our TV commercials and heard the siren song of oregano.

City: Dangerous

Population centers are likely to be primary targets for their invasion. They probably won’t want to exterminate us outright (why would they?), but they may want to take control of our cities, and are likely to kill a lot of people when they do.

Suburb: Dicey

Outside the city centers will be a bit safer, but hardly truly safe.

Rural Area: Dicey

Where humans are spread out, we’ll present less of a target. Then again, if you own an oregano farm….

Military Base: Very Dangerous

You might think that having all those planes and guns around would help, but these will surely be prime targets in an invasion. Since the aliens are likely to be far more technologically advanced, it’s unlikely our military forces could put up much resistance. Our bases would likely be wiped out almost immediately.

Underground Bunker: Safe

This is a good place to be. Orbital and aerial weapons won’t be very effective against underground targets, and even ground troops would have trouble finding and attacking an isolated bunker. Since they probably won’t want to exterminate us, hiding in your bunker until they establish a New World Order could work out for you.

Ship at Sea: Dicey

As long as it’s a civilian vessel, you should be okay. A naval vessel is just as dangerous as a base, if not more so; they would likely strike our entire fleets from orbit almost instantly. But the aliens are unlikely to have much reason to bother attacking a cruise ship or a yacht. Then again, if they do, you’re toast.

Artificial Intelligence Uprising

Risk: Very High

While it sounds very sci-fi, this is one of the most probable apocalypse scenarios, and we should be working to defend against it. There are dozens of ways that artificial intelligence could get out of control and cause tremendous damage, particularly if the AI got control of combat drones or naval vessels. This could mean a superintelligent AI beyond human comprehension, but it need not; it could in fact be a very stupid AI that was programmed to make profits for Hasbro and decided that melting people into plastic was the best way to do that.

City: Very Dangerous

Cities don’t just have lots of people; they also have lots of machines. If the AI can hack our networks, they may be able to hack into not just phones and laptops, but even cars, homes, and power plants. Depending on the AI’s goals (which are very hard to predict), cities could become disaster zones almost immediately, as thousands of cars shut down and crash and all the power plants get set to overload.

Suburb: Dangerous

Definitely safer than the city, but still, you’ve got plenty of technology around you for the AI to exploit.

Rural Area: Dicey

The further you are from other people and their technology, the safer you’ll be. Having bad wifi out in the boonies may actually save your life. Then again, even tractors have software updates now….

Military Base: Very Dangerous

The military is extremely high-tech and all network-linked. Unless they can successfully secure their systems against the AI very well, very fast, suddenly all the guided missiles and combat drones and sentry guns will be deployed in service of the robot revolution.

Underground Bunker: Safe

As long as your bunker is off the grid, you should be okay. The robots won’t have any weapons we don’t already have, and bunkers are built because they protect pretty well against most weapons.

Ship at Sea: Hopeless

You are surrounded by technology and you have nowhere to run. A military vessel is worse than a civilian ship, but either way, you’re pretty much doomed. The AI is going to take over the radio, the GPS system, maybe even the controls of the ship themselves. It could intentionally overload the engines, or drive you into rocks, or simply shut down everything and leave you to starve at sea. A sailing yacht with a hand-held compass and sextant should be relatively safe, if you manage to get your hands on one of those somehow.

Climate Disaster

Risk: Moderate

Let’s be clear here. Some kind of climate disaster is inevitable; indeed, it’s already in progress. But what I’m talking about is something really severe, something that puts all of human civilization in jeopardy. That, fortunately, is fairly unlikely—and even more so after the big bill that just passed!

City: Dicey

Buildings provide shelter from the elements, and cities will be the first places we defend. Dikes will be built around Manhattan like the ones around Amsterdam. You won’t need to worry about fires, snowstorms, or flooding very much. Still, a really severe crisis could cause all utility systems to break down, meaning you won’t have heating and cooling.

Suburb: Dicey

The suburbs will be about as safe as the cities, maybe a little worse because there isn’t as much shelter if you lose your home to a disaster event.

Rural Area: Dangerous

Remote areas are going to have it the worst. Especially if you’re near a coast that can flood or a forest that can burn, you’re exposed to the elements and there won’t be much infrastructure to protect you. Your best bet is to move in toward the city, where other people will try to help you against the coming storms.

Military Base: Very Safe

Military infrastructure will be prioritized in defense plans, and soldiers are already given lots of survival tools and training. If you can get yourself to a military base and they actually let you in, you really won’t have much to worry about.

Underground Bunker: Very Safe

Underground doesn’t have a lot of weather, it turns out. As long as your bunker is well sealed against flooding, earthquakes are really your only serious concern, and climate change isn’t going to affect those very much.

Ship at Sea: Safe

Increased frequency of hurricanes and other storms will make the sea more dangerous, but as long as you steer clear of storms as they come, you should be okay.

Conventional War

Risk: Moderate

Once again, I should clarify. Obviously there are going to be wars—there are wars going on this very minute. But a truly disastrous war, a World War 3 still fought with conventional weapons, is fairly unlikely. We can’t rule it out, but we don’t have to worry too much—or rather, it’s nukes we should worry about, as I’ll get to in a little bit. It’s unlikely that truly apocalyptic damage could be caused by conventional weapons alone.

City: Dicey

Cities will often be where battles are fought, as they are strategically important. Expect bombing raids and perhaps infantry or tank battalions. Still, it’s actually pretty feasible to survive in a city that is under attack by conventional weapons; while lots of people certainly die, in most wars, most people actually don’t.

Suburb: Safe

Suburbs rarely make interesting military targets, so you’ll mainly have to worry about troops passing through on their way to cities.

Rural Area: Safe

For similar reasons to the suburbs, you should be relatively safe out in the boonies. You may encounter some scattered skirmishes, but you’re unlikely to face sustained attack.

Military Base: Dicey

Whether military bases are safe really depends on whether your side is winning or not. If they are, then you’re probably okay; that’s where all the soldiers and military equipment are, there to defend you. If they aren’t, then you’re in trouble; military bases make nice, juicy targets for attack.

Ship at Sea: Safe

There’s a reason it is big news every time a civilian cruise liner gets sunk in a war (does the Lusitania ring a bell?); it really doesn’t happen that much. Transport ships are at risk of submarine raids, and of course naval vessels will face constant threats; but cruise liners aren’t strategically important, so military forces have very little reason to target them.

Gamma-Ray Burst

Risk: Tiny

While gamma-ray bursts certainly happen all the time, so far they have all been extremely remote from Earth. It is currently estimated that they only happen a few times in any given galaxy every few million years. And each one is concentrated in a narrow beam, so even when they happen they only affect a few nearby stars. This is very good news, because if it happened… well, that’s pretty much it. We’d be doomed.

If a gamma-ray burst happened within a few light-years of us, and happened to be pointed at us, it would scour the Earth, boil the water, burn the atmosphere. Our entire planet would become a dead, molten rock—if, that is, it wasn’t so close that it blew the planet up completely. And the same is going to be true of Mars, Mercury, and every other planet in our solar system.

Underground Bunker: Very Dangerous

Your one meager hope of survival would be to be in an underground bunker at the moment the burst hit. Since most bursts give very little warning, you are unlikely to achieve this unless you, like, live in a bunker—which sounds pretty terrible. Moreover, your bunker needs to be a 100% closed system, and deep underground; the surface will be molten and the air will be burned away. There’s honestly a pretty narrow band of the Earth’s crust that’s deep enough to protect you but not already hot enough to doom you.

Anywhere Else: Hopeless

If you aren’t deep underground at the moment the burst hits us, that’s it; you’re dead. If you are on the side of the Earth facing the burst, you will die mercifully quickly, burned to a crisp instantly. If you are not, your death will be a bit slower, as the raging firestorm that engulfs the Earth, boils the oceans, and burns away the atmosphere will take some time to hit you. But your demise is equally inevitable.

Well, that was cheery. Remember, it’s really unlikely to happen! Moving on!

Meteor Impact

Risk: Tiny

Yes, “it has happened before, and it will happen again; the only question is when.” However, meteors with sufficient size to cause a global catastrophe only seem to hit the Earth about once every couple hundred million years. Moreover, right now the first time in human history where we might actually have a serious chance of detecting and deflecting an oncoming meteor—so even if one were on the way, we’d still have some hope of saving ourselves.

Underground Bunker: Dangerous

A meteor impact would be a lot like a gamma-ray burst, only much less so. (Almost anything is “much less so” than a gamma-ray burst, with the lone exception of a supernova, which is always “much more so”.) It would still boil a lot of ocean and start a massive firestorm, but it wouldn’t boil all the ocean, and the firestorm wouldn’t burn away all the oxygen in the atmosphere. Underground is clearly the safest place to be, preferably on the other side of the planet from the impact.

Anywhere Else: Very Dangerous

If you are above ground, it wouldn’t otherwise matter too much where you are, at least not in any way that’s easy to predict. Further from the impact is obviously better than closer, but the impact could be almost anywhere. After the initial destruction there would be a prolonged impact winter, which could cause famines and wars. Rural areas might be a bit safer than cities, but then again if you are in a remote area, you are less likely to get help if you need it.

Plague

Risk: Low

Obviously, the probability of a pandemic is 100%. You best start believing in pandemics; we’re in one. But pandemics aren’t apocalyptic plagues. To really jeopardize human civilization, there would have to be a superbug that spreads and mutates rapidly, has a high fatality rate, and remains highly resistant to treatment and vaccination. Fortunately, there aren’t a lot of bacteria or viruses like that; the last one we had was the Black Death, and humanity made it through that one. In fact, there is good reason to believe that with modern medical technology, even a pathogen like the Black Death wouldn’t be nearly as bad this time around.

City: Dangerous

Assuming the pathogen spreads from human to human, concentrations of humans are going to be the most dangerous places to be. Staying indoors and following whatever lockdown/mask/safety protocols that authorities recommend will surely help you; but if the plague gets bad enough, infrastructure could start falling apart and even those things will stop working.

Suburb: Safe

In a suburb, you are much more isolated from other people. You can stay in your home and be fairly safe from the plague, as long as you are careful.

Rural Area: Dangerous

The remoteness of a rural area means that you’d think you wouldn’t have to worry as much about human-to-human transmission. But as we’ve learned from COVID, rural areas are full of stubborn right-wing people who refuse to follow government safety protocols. There may not be many people around, but they probably will be taking stupid risks and spreading the disease all over the place. Moreover, if the disease can be carried by animals—as quite a few can—livestock will become an added danger.

Military Base: Safe

If there’s one place in the world where people follow government safety protocols, it’s a military base. Bases will have top-of-the-line equipment, skilled and disciplined personnel, and up-to-the-minute data on the spread of the pathogen.

Underground Bunker: Very Safe

The main thing you need to do is be away from other people for awhile, and a bunker is a great place to do that. As long as your bunker is well-stocked with food and water, you can ride out the plague and come back out once it dies down.

Ship at Sea: Dicey

This is an all-or-nothing proposition. If no one on the ship has the disease, you’re probably safe as long as you remain at sea, because very few pathogens can spread that far through the air. On the other hand, if someone on your ship does carry the disease, you’re basically doomed.

Nuclear War

Risk: Very High

Honestly, this is the one that terrifies me. I have no way of knowing that Vladmir Putin or Xi Jinping won’t wake up one morning any day now and give the order to launch a thousand nuclear missiles. (I honestly wasn’t even sure Trump wouldn’t, so it’s a damn good thing he’s out of office.) They have no reason to, but they’re psychopathic enough that I can’t be sure they won’t.

City: Dangerous

Obviously, most of those missiles are aimed at cities. And if you happen to be in the center of such a city, this is very bad for your health. However, nukes are not the automatic death machines that they are often portrayed to be; sure, right at the blast center you’re vaporized. But Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had lots of survivors, many of whom lived on for years or even decades afterward, even despite the radiation poisoning.

Suburb: Dangerous

Being away from a city center might provide some protection, but then again it might not; it really depends on how the nukes are targeted. It’s actually quite unlikely that Russia or China (or whoever) would deploy large megaton-yield missiles, as they are very expensive; so you could only have a few, making it easier to shoot them all down. The far more likely scenario is lots of kiloton-yield missiles, deployed in what is called a MIRV: multiple independent re-entry vehicle. One missile launches into space, then splits into many missiles, each of which can have a different target. It’s sort of like a cluster bomb, only the “little” clusters are each Hiroshima bombs. Those clusters might actually be spread over metropolitan areas relatively evenly, so being in a suburb might not save you. Or it might. Hard to say.

Rural Area: Dicey

If you are sufficiently remote from cities, the nukes probably won’t be aimed at you. And since most of the danger really happens right when the nuke hits, this is good news for you. You won’t have to worry about the blast or the radiation; your main concerns will be fallout and the resulting collapse of infrastructure. Nuclear winter could also be a risk, but recent studies suggest that’s relatively unlikely even in a full-scale nuclear exchange.

Military Base: Hopeless

The nukes are going to be targeted directly at military bases. Probably multiple nukes per base, in case some get shot down. Basically, if you are on a base at the time the missiles hit, you’re doomed. If you know the missiles are coming, your best bet would be to get as far from that base as you can, into as remote an area as you can. You’ll have a matter of minutes, so good luck.

Underground Bunker: Safe

There’s a reason we built a bunch of underground bunkers during the Cold War; they’re one of the few places you can go to really be safe from a nuclear attack. As long as your bunker is well-stocked and well-shielded, you can hide there and survive not only the initial attack, but the worst of the fallout as well.

Ship at Sea: Safe

Ships are small enough that they probably wouldn’t be targeted by nukes. Maybe if you’re on or near a major naval capital ship, like an aircraft carrier, you’d be in danger; someone might try to nuke that. (Even then, aircraft carriers are tough: Anything short of a direct hit might actually be survivable. In tests, carriers have remained afloat and largely functional even after a 100-kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated a mile away. They’re even radiation-shielded, because they have nuclear reactors.) But a civilian vessel or even a smaller naval vessel is unlikely to be targeted. Just stay miles away from any cities or any other ships, and you should be okay.

Zombies

Risk: Miniscule

Zombies per se—the literal undead—aren’t even real, so that’s just impossible. But something like zombies could maybe happen, in some very remote scenario in which some bizarre mutant strain of rabies or something spreads far and wide and causes people to go crazy and attack other people. Even then, if the infection is really only spread through bites, it’s not clear how it could ever reach a truly apocalyptic level; more likely, it would cause a lot of damage locally and then be rapidly contained, and we’d remember it like Pearl Harbor or 9/11: That terrible, terrible day when 5,000 people became zombies in Portland, and then they all died and it was over. An airborne or mosquito-borne virus would be much more dangerous, but then we’re really talking about a plague, not zombies. The ‘turns people into zombies’ part of the virus would be a lot less important than the ‘spreads through the air and kills you’ part.

Seriously, why is this such a common trope? Why do people think that this could cause an apocalypse?

City: Safe

Yes, safe, dammit. Once you have learned that zombies are on the loose, stay locked in your home, wearing heavy clothing (to block bites; a dog suit is ideal, but a leather jacket or puffy coat would do) with a shotgun (or a gauss rifle, see above) at the ready, and you’ll probably be fine. Yes, this is the area of highest risk, due to the concentration of people who could potentially be infected with the zombie virus. But unless you are stupid—which people in these movies always seem to be—you really aren’t in all that much danger. Zombies can at most be as fast and strong as humans (often, they seem to be less!), so all you need to do is shoot them before they can bite you. And unlike fake movie zombies, anything genuinely possible will go down from any mortal wound, not just a perfect headshot—I assure you, humans, however crazed by infection they might be, can’t run at you if their hearts (or their legs) are gone. It might take a bit more damage to drop them than an ordinary person, if they aren’t slowed down by pain; but it wouldn’t require perfect marksmanship or any kind of special weaponry. Buckshot to the chest will work just fine.

Suburb: Safe

Similar to the city, only more so, because people there are more isolated.

Rural Area: Very Safe

And rural areas are even more isolated still—plus you have more guns than people, so you’ll have more guns than zombies.

Military Base: Very Safe

Even more guns, plus military training and a chain of command! The zombies don’t stand a chance. A military base would be a great place to be, and indeed that’s where the containment would begin, as troops march from the bases to the cities to clear out the zombies. Shaun of the Dead (of all things!) actually got this right: One local area gets pretty bad, but then the Army comes in and takes all the zombies out.

Underground Bunker: Very Safe

A bunker remains safe in the event of zombies, just as it is in most other scenarios.

Ship at Sea: Very Safe

As long as the infection hasn’t spread to the ship you are currently on and the zombies can’t swim, you are at literally zero risk.

How to fix economics publishing

PNRJ core principles, personal, science and academia , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 7 JDN 2459806

The current system of academic publishing in economics is absolutely horrible. It seems practically designed to undermine the mental health of junior faculty.

1. Tenure decisions, and even most hiring decisions, are almost entirely based upon publication in five (5) specific journals.

2. One of those “top five” journals is owned by Elsevier, a corrupt monopoly that has no basis for its legitimacy yet somehow controls nearly one-fifth of all scientific publishing.

3. Acceptance rates in all of these journals are between 5% and 10%—greatly decreased from what they were a generation or two ago. Given a typical career span, the senior faculty evaluating you on whether you were published in these journals had about a three times better chance to get their own papers published there than you do.

4. Submissions are only single-blinded, so while you have no idea who is reading your papers, they know exactly who you are and can base their decision on whether you are well-known in the profession—or simply whether they like you.

5. Simultaneous submissions are forbidden, so when submitting to journals you must go one at a time, waiting to hear back from one before trying the next.

6. Peer reviewers are typically unpaid and generally uninterested, and so procrastinate as long as possible on doing their reviews.

7. As a result, review times for a paper are often measured in months, for every single cycle.

So, a highly successful paper goes like this: You submit it to a top journal, wait three months, it gets rejected. You submit it to another one, wait another four months, it gets rejected. You submit it to a third one, wait another two months, and you are told to revise and resubmit. You revise and resubmit, wait another three months, and then finally get accepted.

You have now spent an entire year getting one paper published. And this was a success.

Now consider a paper that doesn’t make it into a top journal. You submit, wait three months, rejected; you submit again, wait four months, rejected; you submit again, wait two months, rejected. You submit again, wait another five months, rejected; you submit to the fifth and final top-five, wait another four months, and get rejected again.

Now, after a year and a half, you can turn to other journals. You submit to a sixth journal, wait three months, rejected. You submit to a seventh journal, wait four months, get told to revise and resubmit. You revise and resubmit, wait another two months, and finally—finally, after two years—actually get accepted, but not to a top-five journal. So it may not even help you get tenure, unless maybe a lot of people cite it or something.

And what if you submit to a seventh, an eighth, a ninth journal, and still keep getting rejected? At what point do you simply give up on that paper and try to move on with your life?

That’s a trick question: Because what really happens, at least to me, is I can’t move on with my life. I get so disheartened from all the rejections of that paper that I can’t bear to look at it anymore, much less go through the work of submitting it to yet another journal that will no doubt reject it again. But worse than that, I become so depressed about my academic work in general that I become unable to move on to any other research either. And maybe it’s me, but it isn’t just me: 28% of academic faculty suffer from severe depression, and 38% from severe anxiety. And that’s across all faculty—if you look just at junior faculty it’s even worse: 43% of junior academic faculty suffer from severe depression. When a problem is that prevalent, at some point we have to look at the system that’s making us this way.

I can blame the challenges of moving across the Atlantic during a pandemic, and the fact that my chronic migraines have been the most frequent and severe they have been in years, but the fact remains: I have accomplished basically nothing towards the goal of producing publishable research in the past year. I have two years left at this job; if I started right now, I might be able to get something published before my contract is done. Assuming that the project went smoothly, I could start submitting it as soon as it was done, and it didn’t get rejected as many times as the last one.

I just can’t find the motivation to do it. When the pain is so immediate and so intense, and the rewards are so distant and so uncertain, I just can’t bring myself to do the work. I had hoped that talking about this with my colleagues would help me cope, but it hasn’t; in fact it only makes me seem to feel worse, because so few of them seem to understand how I feel. Maybe I’m talking to the wrong people; maybe the ones who understand are themselves suffering too much to reach out to help me. I don’t know.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Here are some simple changes that could make the entire process of academic publishing in economics go better:

1. Boycott Elsevier and all for-profit scientific journal publishers. Stop reading their journals. Stop submitting to their journals. Stop basing tenure decisions on their journals. Act as though they don’t exist, because they shouldn’t—and then hopefully soon they won’t.

2. Peer reviewers should be paid for their time, and in return required to respond promptly—no more than a few weeks. A lack of response should be considered a positive vote on that paper.

3. Allow simultaneous submissions; if multiple journals accept, let the author choose between them. This is already how it works in fiction publishing, which you’ll note has not collapsed.

4. Increase acceptance rates. You are not actually limited by paper constraints anymore; everything is digital now. Most of the work—even in the publishing process—already has to be done just to go through peer review, so you may as well publish it. Moreover, most papers that are submitted are actually worthy of publishing, and this whole process is really just an idiotic status hierarchy. If the prestige of your journal decreases because you accept more papers, we are measuring prestige wrong. Papers should be accepted something like 50% of the time, not 5-10%.

5. Double blind submissions, and insist on ethical standards that maintain that blinding. No reviewer should know whether they are reading the work of a grad student or a Nobel Laureate. Reputation should mean nothing; scientific rigor should mean everything.

And, most radical of all, what I really need in my life right now:

6. Faculty should not have to submit their own papers. Each university department should have administrative staff whose job it is to receive papers from their faculty, format them appropriately, and submit them to journals. They should deal with all rejections, and only report to the faculty member when they have received an acceptance or a request to revise and resubmit. Faculty should simply do the research, write the papers, and then fire and forget them. We have highly specialized skills, and our valuable time is being wasted on the clerical tasks of formatting and submitting papers, which many other people could do as well or better. Worse, we are uniquely vulnerable to the emotional impact of the rejection—seeing someone else’s paper rejected is an entirely different feeling from having your own rejected.

Do all that, and I think I could be happy to work in academia. As it is, I am seriously considering leaving and never coming back.

Good news on the climate, for a change

PNRJ macroeconomics, politics, public policy , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aug 7 JDN 2459799

In what is surely the biggest political surprise of the decade—if not the century—Joe Manchin suddenly changed his mind and signed onto a budget reconciliation bill that will radically shift US climate policy. He was the last vote needed for the bill to make it through the Senate via reconciliation (as he often is, because he’s pretty much a DINO).

Because the Senate is ridiculous, there are still several layers of procedure the bill must go through before it can actually pass. But since the parliamentarian was appointed by a Democrat and the House had already passed an even stronger climate bill, it looks like at least most of it will make it through. The reconciliation process means we only need a bare majority, so even if all the Republicans vote against it—which they very likely will—it can still get through, with Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking vote. (Because our Senate is 50-50, Harris is on track to cast the most tie-breaking votes of any US Vice President by the end of her term.) Reconciliation also can’t be filibustered.

While it includes a lot of expenditures, particularly tax credits for clean energy and electric cars, the bill includes tax increases and closed loopholes so that it will actually decrease the deficit and likely reduce inflation—which Manchin said was a major reason he was willing to support it. But more importantly, it promises to reduce US carbon emissions by a staggering 40% by 2030.

The US currently produces about 15 tons of CO2 equivalent per person per year, so reducing that by 40% would drop it to only 9 tons per person per year. This would move us from nearly as bad as Saudi Arabia to nearly as good as Norway. It still won’t mean we are doing as well as France or the UK—but at least we’ll no longer be dragging down the rest of the First World.

And this isn’t a pie-in-the-sky promise: Independent forecasts suggest that these policies may really be able to reduce our emissions that much that fast. It’s honestly a little hard for me to believe; but that’s what the experts are saying.

Manchin wants to call it the Inflation Reduction Act, but it probably won’t actually reduce inflation very much. But some economists—even quite center-right ones—think it may actually reduce inflation quite a bit, and we basically all agree that it at least won’t increase inflation very much. Since the effects on inflation are likely to be small, we really don’t have to worry about them: whatever it does to inflation, the important thing is that this bill reduces carbon emissions.

Honestly, it’ll be kind of disgusting if this actually does work—because it’s so easy. This bill will have almost no downside. Its macroeconomic effects will be minor, maybe even positive. There was no reason it needed to be this hard-fought. Even if it didn’t have tax increases to offset it—which it absolutely does—the total cost of this bill over the next ten years would be less than six months of military spending, so cutting military spending by 5% would cover it. We have cured our unbearable headaches by finally realizing we could stop hitting ourselves in the head. (And the Republicans want us to keep hitting ourselves and will do whatever they can to make that happen.)

So, yes, it’s very sad that it took us this long. And even 60% of our current emissions is still too much emissions for a stable climate. But let’s take a moment to celebrate, because this is a genuine victory—and we haven’t had a lot of those in awhile.