At the present moment the Republican Party appears likely to have majorities in both houses of Congress in 2023. In a column in the Washington Post Matt Bai tells Democrats, smile! The news isn’t all bad:

No one at the White House will say this out loud, certainly, but the fact is that losing control of the House (and possibly the Senate) in November would instantly make the presidency a more manageable job. It would curb the power of the Sanders-Warren wing, freeing Biden to pursue the kind of mainstream liberal agenda — his landmark infrastructure law being a good example — that the voters thought they were getting in the first place.

Meanwhile, a newly emboldened Republican majority — like space junk orbiting its Trumpian star — will gravitate even more strongly toward antidemocratic themes of election fraud and intolerance. Like Clinton and Obama before him, Biden will have the chance to rebrand himself as the grown-up standing firm against bullies and extremists.

I’m not as sure as Mr. Bai is that the parallels between Bill Clinton in 1994 and Barack Obama in 2010 and Joe Biden in 2022 are that strong. For one thing both President Clinton’s and President Obama’s presidential approval ratings were higher going into the midterms than Joe Biden’s. Clinton’s approval rating was over 50% and Obama’s was around 45%. Joe Biden will be very lucky if his approval rating cracks 40% on Election Day 2022.

For another thing, the U. S. domestic and the world situations were a lot rosier going into the midterms in 1994 and 2010 than they are now.

For yet another Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were a lot younger then than Joe Biden is now—just about 30 years younger in both cases. That makes a difference in how much energy they could bring to the party.

My only advice is do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

The editors of the Washington Post are dismayed at the rise of nationalism in the Americas:

The Summit of the Americas, 2022 edition, opens on Monday in Los Angeles, but President Biden is still struggling to finalize the list of leaders who will attend. His counterparts in key countries, notably Mexico, are threatening to boycott unless the United States accepts attendance by the Cuban, Venezuela and Nicaraguan dictatorships. Mr. Biden stands accused of feckless leadership at a time when the United States must orchestrate regional responses to mass migration, covid-19 and inflation.

Mr. Biden should not welcome the region’s tyrants to a meeting for democratically chosen leaders. The attempt to make him do so is symptomatic of more than just long-standing regional disagreements over whether and how to isolate dictators, however. The world, and the Western Hemisphere, have changed since December 1994, when President Bill Clinton presided over the first Summit of the Americas in Miami. At that moment of post-Cold War triumph for the United States and its democratic capitalist model, a consensus in favor of free trade and free elections reigned; Cuban communism, in economic free fall due to the loss of Soviet subsidies, appeared doomed. As the summits recurred every three or four years, U.S.-Latin American trade promotion deals spread from Mexico to the Andes. Moderate politics flourished; absolute poverty rates fell.

That relative harmony lies in the past.

What strikes me about this kerfuffle is that just about everybody is wrong. The editors are wrong in their characterization of the summit. It is not a “meeting for democratically chosen leaders”. It is a summit of the membership of the Organization of American States. Cuba has been readmitted to the OAS contingent on making certain reforms which it has not made so no invitation for Cuba. Venezuela and Nicaragua have renounced their membership so they should not participate, either. AMLO is wrong because the summit is a meeting of the OAS not anybody who wants to attend. President Biden is wrong because all present members of the OAS should be invited. About that there should be no ambiguity.

Diplomacy means dealing with individuals and regimes whom you may not like. It doesn’t mean you deal only with your friends.

Nationalism is on the rise all over the world. The Russian-Ukraine War is an expression of that nationalism on the part of both Russians and Ukrainians. Nationalism is clearly rising both in China and India, just to name Asia’s two largest countries. What we are learning, apparently to the editors’ chagrin, is that in Latin America nationalism consists in part of opposition to the United States.

The only thing that bothers me about the rise of nationalism is that too many Americans see nationalism as a dirty word.

One more point: the editors are mistaken. The “consensus” they mention was illusory. Any consensus was completely downstream of American military might and American military might was downstream of American economic strength. If they want it back, they should favor a resurgence of that economic strength or, in other words, a little more American nationalism.

And none of the ones that are even remotely likely are particularly appealing. In a piece at The National Interest after giving a realist observation about war:

War is not like a Hollywood movie where the good guy always wins in the end. Civilization is coeval with conflict, not its Manichean opposite.

Serbian scholor Damjan Krnjević MiÅ¡ković outlines several possible scenarios for the outcome of Russia’s war against Ukraine. After noting the dichotomy between a Kissingerian view of the war with that of the Biden Administration:

This is evidently not the way the Biden administration and others in the West understand geopolitics, and it is certainly not the way they view the conflict with Russia over Ukraine. For them and their fellow travelers, the war is a black-and-white manifestation of a global struggle between the partisans of democracy and autocracy. This is, of course, an understandable emotional response, but it is hardly the prism through which American, and by extension, Western decisionmaking should be understood. In no way ought geopolitics be conflated with eschatology: championing supremacy in the name of exceptionalism in an era of unipolarity was hubristic enough; trying to impose a “rules-based international liberal order” in conditions of increasingly acrimonious multipolarity is even more so.

he makes this observation:

But the truth is—however uncomfortable it may be to accept—that Ukraine was and remains an object of great power relations and not a subject of international order. Indeed, it would be hard to argue persuasively that a country that depends almost entirely on the free guns, ammo, and reconnaissance supplied by foreign powers is either fully sovereign or fully independent, regardless of its regime type.

The scenarios are:

1. Total victory for Ukraine, including the return of all Ukrainian lands by Russia, potentially including Crimea. This is the scenario being held out by Western (and Baltic) leaders.
2. More or less permanent warfare which he refers to as “frozen conflict”—something like Syria.
3. Edward Luttwak’s three point plan.

but what he sees as the most likely scenario is what he describes in his conclusion:

Thanks to the West’s munificence, Ukraine has been able to demonstrate that it can resist (but not overcome) aggression; now the West must be clear that its priority is coming to terms on some sort of settlement. This will almost certainly require Kyiv to accept a compromise—an unpalatable word to the Ukraine-must-win-at-all-costs faction. This should not be interpreted as necessarily requiring Ukraine to formally sign a legal document that cedes a portion of its lands in perpetuity: we know from the conflict over Karabakh in the South Caucasus that a heroic reversal is possible, and we can point to the unresolved Kosovo case as evidently remaining a point of contention between those who champion territorial integrity as a cornerstone principle of international law and those who continue to pressure Serbia, a UN member state, into “accepting the reality on the ground.” The point is that the onset of such European conflicts and their subsequent trajectories had less to do with respecting the basic tenets of the UN Charter than geopolitical ebb and flow coupled with shifts in the balance of power.

Perhaps this maximalist faction would have more luck in convincing its recalcitrant Western allies, not to mention the rest of the world, of the sincerity of its intentions were it not for the fact that Ukraine is hardly a democracy in the usual Western understanding of the term: Freedom House calls it a “partly free” and “transitional or hybrid regime” while Transparency International ranks it as the most corrupt country in Europe.

Democracy or not, if this conflict goes on much longer, Ukraine runs the imminent risk of becoming irredeemably dysfunctional once it comes to an end—say, the Bosnia of Eastern Europe—and Russia could end up as China’s Belarus or what the Warsaw Pact states were to the Soviet Union. How could either of these scenarios, to say nothing of both, possibly be in the interest of the West?

or, said another way, not all territorial integrities are created equal. BTW, Mr. Luttwak sees Germany as the primary impediment to what he characterizes as a “solidly satisfactory outcome”:

Unlike the victory lobby, I see the makings of a solidly satisfactory outcome in the present situation, so long as enough aid reaches Ukraine to keep up its strength — and that means reading the riot act to double-dealing Chancellor Olaf Scholz — while vigorously proposing a peace plan. After all, the two sides have already reached agreement on the broadest issues: Zelenskyy has already stated that Ukraine will not join Nato and the Russian side has already accepted Ukraine’s entry into the European Union.

which I think is certainly correct as far as it goes. I’m not sure that’s a likely let alone inevitable outcome. At this point it appears to me that the most likely outcome is “wrecking Ukraine” which perhaps not coincidentally is what John Mearsheimer predicted 15 years ago.

Ruy Teixeira is worried that Democrats don’t “get” suburban voters by focusing on gun control and abortion:

The idea seems to be that the suburbs are full of liberal, highly-educated voters who are likely to be particularly moved by these issues and turn out against the Republicans. That may be true in some limited areas at the margins but it seems highly unlikely to work in the suburbs writ large for a very simple reason: actually-existing suburban voters are quite different from this caricature.

For one thing they don’t understand who lives in the suburbs:

Contrary to popular perception, less than a third of the suburban vote nationwide is made up of college-educated whites, the presumed locus of appeal for the suburban abortion/guns/very liberal on social issues vote. In fact, about three-fifths of suburban white voters are working class (noncollege).

and for another suburban voters aren’t particularly progressive:

Overall, according to Gallup, just 30 percent of adults with a four year degree only describe themselves as liberal and 36 percent of those with some postgraduate education (the less numerous group) do so. Putting this together with the data about suburban demographics, this implies that perhaps one-ninth (a third of a third) of suburban voters are white college-educated liberals. Perhaps the figure is a bit higher but I doubt that it’s much higher.

Aggravating the situation is that the position that Democrats are staking out on abortion is not aligned with that of suburban voters:

It is undeniably true that suburban voters are opposed to the overturning of Roe v. Wade but it is also true that they are open to significant limits on access to abortion—for example, suburban voters, by 53 percent to 41 percent, say they would favor a law in their state confining access to abortion (except in the case of medical emergency) to the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy. This suggests a contested playing field where Democrats’ ability to mobilize voters around the issue may be hindered by the party’s commitment to more or less unfettered access, which is not particularly popular.

Said another way the party leadership is taking positions much more extreme than those of the voters they most want to attract. Why?

I don’t think it’s so much that they’re trying to appeal to an electorate that doesn’t exist as Mr. Teixeira suggests. I think it’s a consequence of the drive to nationalize politics. It’s not that they don’t understand suburban voters. It’s that they don’t understand anybody who doesn’t live in the DC suburbs.

The editors of the Washington Post urge Congress to act to remedy the problems with Social Security and Medicare before there’s a crisis:

The trustees for Medicare and Social Security released Thursday their yearly projections of how these cornerstone old-age entitlements will fare as more Americans begin drawing benefits and coverage costs rise. They concluded that the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, which finances retirees’ monthly Social Security checks, will run through its reserves by 2034. At that point the tax revenue stream backing the fund could pay for only about 77 percent of promised benefits.

Meanwhile, the Medicare trust fund financing old-age hospital spending will run short by 2028, and spending on other elements of the Medicare program, which is backed by general tax revenue, is set to balloon. Taxpayers are on the hook to pay massive amounts to keep them running in their current forms. Medicare will gobble up ever-increasing amounts of national wealth — from 3.9 percent of gross domestic product this year to 6 percent by 2040 and 6.5 percent by 2070. If, as expected, Congress adjusts Medicare payments so that doctors continue to take Medicare patients, Medicare spending would expand to 8.6 percent of GDP by the end of the century.

These numbers may seem small. They are not; total federal spending has historically hovered around 20 percent of GDP. The trustees are projecting a vast expansion of outlays for the elderly that would hollow out the government’s ability to spend on education, infrastructure, anti-poverty programs and other investments in children and working-age adults.

It’s not a surprise; we had ample warning. We have known that these developments would take place for 60 years. 12 years for the Social Security Trust Fund is an eternity in a Washington, DC focused with single-minded intensity on the next five months. 6 years for Medicare is hardly better.

Adding insult to injury like it or not 2028 will not be during the Biden Administration. It will be the problem of President Biden’s successor whoever that might be. The political circumstances are not conducive to addressing the problem.

Furthermore I don’t believe our political leaders know what to do about the problem or to repurpose German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer’s witticism, they know what to do but they don’t know how to do but keep their jobs. It has been quite clear for 20 years that the main difference between the United States and other developed countries is not merely our healthcare system but that the United States isn’t willing to control healthcare spending.

The simplest thing that Congress could do is nothing, something well within its wheelhouse. Based on legislation enacted long ago that will cause Medicare reimbursement rates to fall to a “sustainable” level. Contrary to the editors’ fears that doesn’t seem to have much effect on the number of physicians who accept Medicare patients. That supports my hypothesis about Medicare reimbursement rates rather than the prevailing wisdom.

A more complicated solution would be to limit what is covered by Medicare but that would be politically fraught and require a prudence and attention to detail we haven’t seen from Congress. Another alternative would be to increase taxes which would be even more politically fraught.

I expect Congress to do nothing.

One statement by Sean Fieler in his Wall Street Journal op-ed raised some red flags for me. The op-ed itself is about how the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) movement is fostering monopolistic action in violation of U. S. law. Here’s his opening:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine calls into question the wisdom of the environmental, social and governance movement’s policy centerpiece: restricting oil and gas investment. In addition to causing hydrocarbon shortages and strengthening the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and Russia, the coordinated effort to depress oil and gas production is potentially a violation of American antitrust law. This combination of bad policy and legal risk will likely prove too much for profit-minded ESG supporters, and the movement will lose much of its support.

ESG standards are top-down and coercive for a simple reason: Suppressing oil and gas consumption is unpopular. Given this political constraint, the ESG movement has steered clear of hydrocarbon taxation and focused on undemocratic efforts to restrict the supply of oil and gas via elite institutions, specifically corporate boards. This strategy has delivered spectacular results. Look at the movement’s victory over Exxon Mobil last year.

Here’s the meat of his argument:

Unfortunately for the ESG movement, its coercive tactics are possibly a violation of American antitrust law. Advancing the ESG agenda requires that the owners of capital collude to restrict the supply of certain goods and services. Regardless of the colluding parties’ motivations, this is a textbook antitrust violation.

and here’s his conclusion:

The notion that ESG proponents are colluding solely to make the world a better place is neither completely true nor a particularly robust legal argument. No matter how noble the ESG movement’s intentions, its proponents are profiting from their efforts. First, to the extent that members of Climate Action 100+ continue to invest in oil and gas companies, they are benefiting from the higher profits that have resulted from their effort to restrict the supply of oil and gas. Second, by excluding non-ESG money managers from bidding on certain contracts, the members of Climate Action 100+ are reducing the competition they face in the marketplace.

The impulse to do good underlies mainstream support for the ESG movement. That’s not going away. But the coercive and undemocratic tactics that characterize the push for decarbonization have likely peaked. As the ESG movement pivots, its proponents will need to recognize that prudent capital allocation decisions can’t be reduced to a reporting and box-checking exercise.

I’ve highlighted the passage in his conclusion that raised a red flag for me. In the history of the world has what he is describing ever happened? To the best of my knowledge authoritarian regimes have collapsed (Soviet Union), been defeated in war (Nazi Germany), or been removed by revolution (Bourbon France) but they have never simply “pivoted” away from authoritarian behavior. Quite to the contrary, I think they are strongly motivated to redouble their efforts, becoming even more authoritarian, confident that what they’re trying to accomplish will succeed if they just try hard enough.

I presume that you could claim that the ESG movement isn’t authoritarian or undemocratic at all or, as I think is more likely, you might conjecture that those who pursue it have only started to employ the “top-down and coercive” measures is using to accomplish its goals but I think that claiming that the movement will “pivot away” from its strategies is a fantasy.

Dennis Blair has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on undersea mining but this is the passage that caught my eye:

Nickel is the metal currently most responsible for providing range in electric-vehicle batteries. Global nickel demand for batteries is forecast to grow 20 to 25 times by 2040, and market analysts expect significant shortages in two to three years. Russia is one of the largest suppliers of class 1 battery-grade nickel, and Chinese interests control production elsewhere in Asia, mostly underneath rainforests in the Philippines, New Caledonia and Indonesia.

To electrify half the cars and trucks Americans purchase by 2030, the Biden administration’s target, the U.S. will need to secure more than 650,000 tons of battery-grade nickel each year. Annual domestic nickel production amounts to about 18,000 tons. Recycling and conservation can go only so far. Securing new supplies of battery-grade nickel should be a priority for achieving America’s energy security goals.

Total global nickel production is about 2.5 million metric tons and that has been fairly stable for a decade. Indonesia is by far the largest producer. 650,000 tons over eight years is about 80,000 additional tons per year. That’s more than the increase over the last 20 years. And Russia’s production (250,000 metric tons/year) is now out of reach and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

The balance of the piece deals with the abundance of nickel available beneath the ocean floor. Frankly, I don’t believe that we can expand production the necessary amount over the specified period regardless of where it’s mined.

And then there’s the question of whether battery production can be ramped up to the necessary level but that’s a different subject.

The article on agricultural robotics piqued my interest. Was robotics making any inroads into home construction? I knew about the experimentation with additive manufacturing techniques in home construction (which don’t actually appear to be making much headway). How about robotics in the home construction industry? This article at PBC Today cast a little light on the subject:

While current robot technology is unlikely to replace people entirely anytime in the near future, there are many tasks in construction that are well suited to automation, which could help fill the gaps in the workforce left by current skills shortages. With demand for more high-quality homes increasing, anything that can bolster construction teams should be considered. It is even possible for a robot to build the walls of a home directly from a CAD model, ensuring speed and precision in construction, and offering a potential solution to the housing crisis.

As well as building homes on-site, robots could also be used to improve off-site manufacturing. Modern methods of construction (MMC) continue to grow in popularity, thanks to their efficiency, and robots could help to increase production further by building parts quickly in nearby micro factories.

Frankly, at least in the U. S. I doubt that the impediment identified in the article (customer acceptance) is as big a factor as zoning restrictions and other government regulations. It does seem to me that there are several areas of home construction that are highly repetitive, e.g. bricklaying and roofing, that could be prime targets. The main impediments to the use of prefabricated housing here have been zoning, regulation, and financing.

I found this post by Amanda Little at Bloomberg on the use of robots in farming very interesting:

A robot army is beginning its march across rural America, promising to transform the future of food. Twenty-five intelligent machines were dispatched last month to the Midwest and the Mississippi Delta, where they will advance over newly planted fields at 12 miles an hour, annihilating baby weeds.

Produced by John Deere and created by the startup Blue River Technology, these robotic weeders look much like standard industrial sprayers at first glance, but each is rigged with an intricate system of 36 cameras and a mass of tiny hoses. They use computer vision to distinguish between crops and weeds and then deploy with sniper-like precision tiny jets of herbicide onto the weeds — sparing the crop and ending the common practice of broadcast-spraying chemicals across billions of acres.

The “See and Spray Ultimate” robots are expensive, enormous, wildly complex machines currently accessible only to industrial-scale farmers, but within a few years their impact on the environment and human health could be nothing short of spectacular. They are in the vanguard of a wave of reimagined agricultural equipment that will help farmers produce more food on less land with radically reduced chemical applications.

The benefits of these agricultural robots are many including they make it possible to use fewer chemicals in the fields not limited to herbicides, fungicides, and other pesticides but also fertilizers. They have the potential of changing the economics of farming considerably.

At the turn of the 20th century large combine harvesters came into use in the Midwest of the United States, initially horsedrawn but later powered by gasoline engines. These devices enabled the efficient harvesting of large fields of various grains. They were expensive—too expensive for most individual farms. Various forms of cooperatives were formed to purchase and, in effect, rent them to farmers at harvest time. I expect something similar will happen with this development. It’s interesting to see companies like John Deere which produced the revolution in farming technology of the late 19th and early 20th centuries staking their futures on this new technology.