Joanna Bryson

Did you read the article? Persuasive that China is doing a better version of Adam Smith than the present US economy.

cc @tylerjost.bsky.social (one of the authors)

After Xi The succession question obscuring China’s future—and unsettling its present.

Genuinely surprised there's no mention of Xi considering an AI version of himself as "heir". Given the number of people around Trump that appear to believe in #AGI which is kind of like believing in "AI Heaven" (20C), "Whole brain uploading" (early 21C, now?)
www.foreignaffairs.com/china/after-...

Maybe they're just pretending to believe in AI, and that infrastructure is really for cyberwar and/or cryptocurrencies?

When my ancestors came to the US in the 1890s, they were viewed as Jewish and *therefore* foreign, treated with disdain along with other immigrants and anyone viewed as outsiders. Trump’s policy follows the same ideology, one which emboldens rather than fights antisemitism.

Incredible feeling to finally see it published 🤩

What are the macro effects of making UI more generous?

In this paper we seek to answer this contentious question 📝

We find increases in aggregate unemployment, driven by both longer UI durations & increased inflows 💡

This Chip will Self-Destruct The U.S. wants to track the location of every AI microchip. And it also wants the power to remotely shut them down. Can the rest of the world stomach the risks?

Via Henry Farrell.

If we want to keep this power, which no one should have, we need to exercise it very cautiously. Other countries often tolerate someone having disproportionate power when that power is used sparingly and in situations where its use seems necessary. Abuse it and watch it vanish.

Great one-line summary of a great article.

I posted a 3-part thread addressing all of that this morning, coincidentally bsky.app/profile/j2br...

#AIEthics #digitalGovernance

And it’s the US burning everything down, though a few faithful do actually believe 1) AGI will save us from our previous stupid underinvestment in infrastructure, including regulation, and 2) that “scale” is the only way to achieve that AGI. 1/2

When we DO equalise without chaos, there's no big exciting blip for someone to write about. 2/2

The one I *did* pick up is www.tony-atkinson.com/new-book-ine... Atkinson is Piketty's PhD advisor and was offended how famous P got while still being wrong. But another I haven't got around to is Scheidel. My complaint is that they focus on the failures and ignore the successes 1/2

ha ha I can't believe he didn't know about germs :-D

IDK tbh I didn't read the Diamond book and have to buy this one Monday, but as I said this one is flawed, but it's useful in that it documents things better than Harari did. Maybe I'd think the same of Diamond. I wasn't doing political econ back then.

They CLAIM to love frugality –that's a mask for dismantling the state that supports them. Oligarchs will ultimately collapse in a heap, as frequently before bsky.app/profile/j2br... meanwhile, China's economy is ACTUALLY frugal bsky.app/profile/j2br... It's a thread because all 3 articles interlink.

Enough of the billionaires and their big tech. ‘Frugal tech’ will build us all a better world | Eleanor Drage Titans like Musk would love us to believe innovation means top-down solutions that only enrich the wealthy. In fact, we all have the power, says Eleanor Drage, research fellow at Cambridge University

Then here's Eleanor Drage (someone get her on @bsky.app !) spot on about the way forward on AI. (3 / 3 for now :-)

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

#digitalGovernance #regulation #hope #DMA

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

This weekend has been incredible for finding writings really getting it all together eg this on a new book that's better than Harari, really groks some dynamics, but also leaves room for me to finish my book, by undervaluing the utility of structure & government. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

China is doing capitalism better than the US and Germany. | Joanna Bryson China is doing capitalism better than the US and Germany. The EU needs to read this and learn. Small numbers of high market cap companies indicate value-destroying corruption; large numbers of competi...

www.linkedin.com/posts/bryson...
Sorry it's in @linkedin.com but it's too long for here (IMO long threads on microblogging sites are BS, sorry.) It should be on my blog but I wanted to tag people. I'll probably migrate it after conversation. But tl;dr read the longer, but EXCELLENT article it links.

This is quite excellent (HT @economeager.bsky.social)

Part of what makes it excellent is that it could as well be titled "How do I?" because it's about being just a _little_ more deliberate about the task of being in the world.

I've used it for ages – it's less pretentious and somewhat differently, more relaxedly semanticed than semicolons. Though I do still use semicolons as meta separators of comma separated lists, and when being pretentious works.

Now it’s illegal for parties to be against democracy in Germany, but one that suddenly is just won the second highest vote total (about 20% — we have a lot of parties here*) and we have to figure out what to do about it.

*no presidential system, which facilitates more parties, & hinders autocracy.

Does that mean it doesn’t matter?

I'm going to have to spend more time with this excellent blog post by Adam. The part on effective communication is worthy of contemplation. I wonder how we practice, and how we ensure the people we're talking to are using the same communication playbook.

I don’t usually say either of these but:

1) 😳 How have I never heard of this before? It’s like not knowing CalTech ever limited the # of Jewish profs per dept until Oppenheimer came out.

2) if you’re in AI policy or political ethics @alondra.bsky.social isn’t just a good follow, she’s essential.

RFK Jr. warned about giving the government your data. Now he wants it. The Health and Human Services secretary's pivot on wearables is a case study in how conspiracy extremists rebrand themselves once in positions of power.

RFK Jr. used to warn about a government takeover of our data. He said wearables and their tech were part of a plot to surveil us, enabled tyranny, caused cancer, and turned users into “permanent consumers” to Big Tech.

Now, he'd like your data, please.
www.msnbc.com/opinion/anal...

Academic journals have the same problem, & Trump canceled public broadcasting. Who thinks they'll wind up with power when they've disconnected all the people & dismantled the institutions that make them productive? They're burning down the tree trunk in an effort to reorder the branches they sit on.

The résumé is dying, and AI is holding the smoking gun As thousands of applications flood job posts, ‘hiring slop’ is kicking off an AI arms race.

I have two very smart kids that are unemployed.
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Employers are drowning in AI-generated job applications, with LinkedIn now processing 11,000 submissions per minute - a 45 percent surge from last year

arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/t...

Data is pretty unreliable in autocracies. Should worry the people betting the planet's collective farm on generative AI.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/01/trump-fires-bls-chief/

What do you think about teaching firstmonday.org/ojs/index.ph... it would seem also relevant, if you're really doing geopolitics?

Previous conversation on bubble bsky.app/profile/j2br...