Paul Krugman seems to be hitting a new stride, having left the shackles of employment by the NY Times.
“And at the beginning of 2024 America seemed on track to enact much weaker but still significant legislation to protect minors from some of the worst consequences of social media. The Kids Online Safety Act wouldn’t have banned minors from using social media, but it would have created a “duty of care” for social media platforms minors are likely to use, obliging these platforms to try to limit content that could promote bullying, eating disorders, suicide and so on.
This wasn’t about ideology or politics; social media platforms would remain free to spread political mis- and disinformation to adults. … This legislation was narrowly focused on protecting the mental health of children, which is why a version of the bill passed the Senate by a 91-3 margin in July.
But then Mark Zuckerberg and Meta got to work. After all, while most of us see social media addiction as a health crisis, for Meta, it’s a business model.”
Krugman sees an upcoming grifter economy as he writes in his new blog, The Plot to Poison Children’s Minds
“To be modern, almost by definition, is to live without putting much stock in a supernatural “beyond” to the world. And yet, nearly every time a new technology is introduced, its promoters reach back to the ancient idea of magic to capture its significance. …
Even more surprising is how often we still talk about a specific magical tradition: the practice of alchemy. For centuries, alchemists sought to transmute all metals into gold, to escape the conditions of mortality…
Now, if to be modern is to largely disbelieve in magic, surely to be modern is to know that the alchemists’ quest failed….
So why is alchemy—a dead-end approach to the natural world—such a recurring theme in our own time?”
From After Babel, Where the Magic Doesn’t Happen
The Farm Bill is one way to see whether the Make America Healthy Again movement has any real chops. I have read a lot about the topic in the last few weeks. Matt Stoller captures the essence of the actual players – spoiler alert: it doesn’t involve doctors, nutritionists, or what we might stereotypically call farmers.
“The Farm Bill basically helps big processors through various financing, insurance, and subsidy programs that encourage the development of big farms that grow one or two main crops or use industrial livestock housing. The law is designed as a compromise. To oversimplify, urban Democrats want subsidized food for poor people in cities, while rural Republicans want subsidies for agribusiness and farmers, most notably corn and soy. It’s usually a scuffle, as a contact told me, between “food stamps versus subsidies for the big row crops, most of which goes to the top 10% of farms.”
From Big, Big Ag vs Make America Healthy Again
Chuck Dinerstein, MD, MBA
Director of Medicine
Dr. Charles Dinerstein, M.D., MBA, FACS is Director of Medicine at the American Council on Science and Health. He has over 25 years of experience as a vascular surgeon.
