What Does It Mean To Make Art?
Translation of the Brodsky poem (and the whole thread is interesting, sorry Arnold but you won’t easily get this stuff anywhere else)
An Unexpected But Welcome Call to Cap CEO Pay Comes From France
Neo-liberal Emmanuel Macron endorsed capping CEO pay as part of the recent French presidential campaign. Is the concept of a maximum wage an idea whose time has come?
What should I ask Cynthia Haven?
She is Rene Girard’s biographer, and has other interesting books as well, including on Czeslaw Milosz and Joseph Brodsky, and she is an expert in poetry and the humanities more broadly. Here is one biography(how can she not have her own Wikipedia page?). Here is her blog. Here is Cynthia on Twitter. To her credit, she has done all this without the benefit of a formal, tenured university post. She also runs her own “conversations,” and is working further on Girard. So what should I ask her?
My excellent Conversation with Thomas Piketty
Lots of disagreement in this episode, though always polite. Here is the transcript, video, and audio. Here is part of the summary:
He joined Tyler to discuss just how egalitarian France actually is, the beginning of the end of aristocratic society, where he places himself within French intellectual history, why he’s skeptical of data from before the late 18th century, how public education drives economic development, why Georgism isn’t sufficient to address wealth inequality, the relationship between wealth and cultural capital, his proposal for a minimum inheritance, why he turned down the Legion of Honor, why France should give reparations to Haiti despite the logistical difficulties of doing so, his vision for European federalism, why more immigration won’t be a panacea for inequality, his thoughts on Michel Houellebecq’s Submission, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: If I visit every major country in Europe, what I observe is the highest living standard is arguably in Switzerland — Norway and Luxembourg aside. Switzerland has one of the smallest governments, and they attempt relatively little redistribution. What is your understanding of Switzerland? What if someone said, “Well, Europe should try to be more like Switzerland. They’re doing great.” Why is that wrong?
PIKETTY: Oh, Switzerland. It’s a very small country, so it’s about the size. . . . Actually, it’s smaller than Île-de-France, which is a Paris region. Now, if you were to make a separate country out of Île-de-France, GDP per capita, I think, would actually be higher than Switzerland. Of course, you can take a wealthy region in your country and say, “Okay, I don’t want to share anything with the rest of the country. I’m going to keep my tax revenue for me. I’m going to be a tax haven based on bank secrecy.” That’s going to make you 10 percent or 20 percent richer. I’m not saying —
COWEN: It’s been a long time since Switzerland relied on bank secrecy, right? Following 9/11, that Swiss advantage largely went away.
PIKETTY: Oh, that’s wrong. Oh, you’re wrong on this.
We talk about Matt Rognlie and Greg Clark as well. Recommended, this was fun for me to reread.
*Graveyard Clay* [Cré na Cille]
The author is Máirtín Ó Cadhain, and I am surprised how compelling I am finding this novel, translated from the Irish. The premise is that the dead inhabitants of a graveyard complain and bicker about their lot, most of all about the new arrivals sent their way. Dear reader, these are NIMBY dead people. Imagine Dante’s Inferno, but instead of the elegant circles of hell it resembles the kind of squabbling and black humor you might find in a cranky Irish pub.
Excerpt:
I wonder what sort of funeral I had? I won’t know until the next corpse I’m acquainted with arrives. It’s high time now for someone to come.
This is a well-known novel, especially in Ireland, and often it is considered the best Irish-language novel of all time. But I’ve never heard people telling other people they ought to read it, and in that sense it doesn’t seem so very well known in the United States at all. This is the translation I have been enjoying.
Has the chance of life on Europa just gone way up?
Okie-Dokie. GPT-3 edition