Winter is coming, communists against affirmation, primary care in Africa, and more!
RWL #355
Greetings from the Last Homely House! The count down till the start of the fall semester is officially underway - 19 days! Where does the time go? I haven’t been able to make my annual trip to Mollidgewock State Park yet for a little paddling and relaxation - I am hoping maybe next week. And I guess I need to write some syllabi…
I’m also feeling, a little bit, the winds of winter. It’s plenty toasty (and humid), but already some of the trees have leaves that are starting to turn. And you know what we do in New Hampshire in the summer? Buy our wood for our stoves for next year! I had a cord of green wood delivered last week and I am slowly stacking it so that it can dry for next winter (not this coming winter, but the winter after). You have to think ahead to get by up here. Winter is coming.
See you Sunday with another essay. As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: Freddie deBoer, Prologue to an Anti-Therapeutic, Anti-Affirmation Movement
Why: deBoer is a self-described “Marxist of an old-school variety”, so it might surprise you, given my preferences (free-market, classical liberal) that I recently began reading his Substack with some interest. He’s smart, even if he is a commie. He also adds: “I have bipolar disorder and have been in and out (mostly out) of treatment my entire adult life, but I have been continuously in treatment and medicated since late August of 2017.” I’ve read some of his writing about mental health and listened to him speak on a few pods about his experience, and I find I am aligned with him in my perspective about therapeutic culture in the US.
This essay explores, or at least wills, the coming of a turn away from therapeutic culture in the US and back toward something more Stoic - which in my opinion was the classic American culture. He writes:
Once upon a time, there was strong social value in being “cool,” with the concept of cool referring to a studied indifference to the vagaries of fate; turning away from the pursuit of cool to defining ourselves according to our weaknesses and neuroses was a profound mistake, cool was a humane and correct social value, and we should return to it.
The Greeks and Romans would have called that Stoicism.
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What: Federal Reserve History, The Great Inflation: 1965–1982
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-inflation
Why: I distinctly remember the core years of the great inflation in the late 70’s because I was a little kid and I saw the inflation happening the way kids do: in the price of candy and soda. I remember riding my bike to Johny’s, the corner store in my neighborhood, at the beginning of the summer and being able to buy a can of soda and a candy bar for $0.25 each. By the end of the summer, the price was $0.35 each. That doesn’t sound like much, but think about it - $0.50 to $0.70 is a 40% increase. That’s a lot for someone on a very limited budget, which I definitely was on at that time!
This is a concise essay outlining the Great Inflation and its monetary causes. Something worth considering given our recent bout of inflation.
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Watch
What: Peter Zeihan, Russia's Largest Port Comes Under Fire (11 min)
Why: I hadn’t thought a lot about naval drones - I was a ground pounder in my prior life, so forgive me - but the Ukrainians are making good use of naval drones and showing how ineffective standard ship defenses are. Two things out of this video: 1) the Ukrainians are really stepping up the use of drones at sea and that is potentially going to be transformative in this war in terms of hitting Russian strategic capability; and 2) it’s not just in the Black Sea that naval drones are going to transform naval warfare - so that is something to think about, and I suspect this threat is asymmetric (i.e., cheap offense, hard to defend against - not necessarily good fo the US).
I know I share Zeihan a lot, but he’s wicked smaht, as we say up hee-ah.
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Listen
What: The Dispatch Podcast, Israel's Constitutional Moment (68 min)
Why: Like Great Britain, Israel doesn’t have a written constitution. As an American, I continue to have trouble wrapping my head around that. What the US Constitution means changes with who is on the Supreme Court, but generally at the margins. As I understand it, the UK has close to a thousand years of history and tradition to draw on, so although it doesn’t have a written constitution, it has a pretty good head of steam behind it. Israel, on the other hand, is much younger - having been founded only in 1948. Over the last 30 years or so, it has gone through a radical demographic and political transition, and there is a new, narrow majority, which may upend the 70 or so years of history and tradition. Even if you aren’t particularly interested in Israeli politics, this pod is interesting to listen to as an American because it gives an example of a country that is similar (founded as a liberal democracy), but quite different because of the lack of a written constitution.
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What: Cold Call, Can Business Transform Primary Health Care Across Africa? (31 min)
Why: A very interesting case for my healthcare readers to check out. The Cold Call podcast takes a Harvard Business School professor and pairs her/him up with a subject about which the professor has written an HBS case. In this case, the subject is trying to increase access to primary care in Africa by building something like the CVS minute clinics. Co-founder and CEO Greg Rockson already has a chain of pharmacies operating in Africa and is trying to add primary care to the pharmacies as CVS has been doing. A very interesting strategy - worth a listen if you care about health equity.