Wednesday Links: treatment of trans kids, the Chinese spy balloon, and the business of sports
RWL #321
Greetings from the University of New Hampshire! The wife and I went away for a fabulous weekend in Jackson, NH, where we went snowshoeing with friends up Eagle Mountain. It was our second year making this journey and I think we are going to make it an annual tradition now. Jackson has marked snowshoe trails and groomed trails for cross-country skiing. It was a perfect day for being outside exercising - 30 degrees and sunny. I hope you are enjoying the lengthening days - I know I feel a rising energy and an urge to get back out on the water.
So here’s this week’s links - I’ve dialed back to just three this week because each of them is excellent: a difficult piece about the medical treatment of kids identifying as trans; Zeihan on the Chinese spy balloon; and a business analysis of three different sports leagues. I’ll be back Sunday with an essay.
As usual, willing good for all of you!
Read
What: The Free Press, I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I’m Blowing the Whistle.
Why: I identify as a classical liberal, which is similar in most regards to a libertarian. I learned a great deal about classical liberalism from one of my favorite economists, Deirdre McCloskey. I had the opportunity to meet her and have her as a discussant on a panel where I was presenting a paper on Adam Smith. She is brilliant and generous, and also a transgender woman. She transitioned at middle-age.
As a classical liberal, one of the things I believe is that adults should be allowed to live the lives they want in the way they want, with whom they want so long as all involved are capable of consent. I’ve followed the radical increase in transgender identification, in particular among biological girls with concern. If you are not aware, gender dysphoria was far more often expressed by biological boys until recently when the ratios equalized and suddenly an equal number of adolescent girls are now announcing they are transgender. Many of these girls who are identifying as trans also have multiple psychiatric comorbidities, which suggests gender dysphoria may not be the primary issue these children face. More concerning, however, is the willingness of the medical establishment to treat minors with irreversible medical interventions such as puberty blockers and surgery, rather than support and time. Euphemisms like “top surgery” refer to otherwise healthy girls getting double mastectomies. I am concerned with the speed that gender dysphoria has appeared in the young biological girl population, and I am concerned with how quickly the medical establishment has made such treatments available, and with how easy it appears that children are able to get irreversible medical treatment. I have no problem with mature adults, such as McCloskey, making this choice for themselves, but teenagers are, in my observation, prone to serious failures of judgment about the future. It’s why we restrict their access to all sorts of things, like alcohol, tobacco, credit cards, or renting a car. My question is whether the medical establishment is following its obligation to first do no harm. This article is worth reading.
Also worth reading is Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage.
Also read anything by McCloskey, such as The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce.
Some supplemental articles from the scientific literature:
This 2017 Journal of Public Health article shows a tripling in the occurrence of gender dysphoria from 2007 - 2015, but does not break out girls and boys.
This Journal of Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry study confirms the secular increase in gender dysphoria and confirms an increase in mental health comorbidities with gender dysphoria.
This study in the Journal of Transgender Health confirms both the continuing secular increase of gender dysphoria and the relative increase of female to male transitioning from 1990 - 2017.
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Watch
What: Peter Zeihan, It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a Chinese Spy Balloon… (9 min)
Why: So much discussion about the Chinese spy balloon on the interwebs and the pods. Zeihan’s perspective? This is CCP incompetence, and at the end of the day, they made a big technology transfer to us through that incompetence. He’s always interesting. This short video is no exception.
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Listen
What: Business Breakdowns, The Business of Sport: NFL, F1, PGA Tour (101 min)
Why: A discussion of three different major sports businesses. Honestly, I’m not a sports fan. I don’t mind going to live events - we had fun going to see the Spurs a few times when we lived in San Antonio - but I like the spectacle more than watching the actual competition, mostly because I don’t know the rules and don’t appreciate the quality of play. It’s a bit like listening to classical music - I don’t get that much out of it because I don’t have the musical capital to appreciate most of it. Same with sports - you have to have a certain amount of sports capital to appreciate it. I do, however, understand business and marketing pretty well. So this pod was interesting to listen to because it is all about how the various leagues and organizations make their money and turn fan passion into profit. If you’re a fan of the NFL, F1, or PGA, you may learn something about your sport that you didn’t know before by listening to this.