Links, 9/23/22

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1. Bryan Caplan against scapegoating the rich. I don’t love the rich and think they’re clearly flawed, but obviously much better than the poor. If you want to be a misanthrope, fine, but I won’t tolerate singling out people with money for special scorn.

2. Biden once again brags that he told Xi not to support Putin, and Xi listened to him. I find it weird that, even if it’s true that the Biden administration scared China off of helping Russia, they would keep telling the media. Wouldn’t that embarrass the Chinese, and make them reconsider? I think there are two possibilities here, and probably both are true. First, as I argue in my book, it’s not about grand strategy at all, it’s just moral preening and politics, and this makes Biden look good, so that’s the narrative they’re going with even if it has undesirable geopolitical consequences. Second, it might not change Chinese behavior anyway, because China only worries about its domestic audience and they don’t have to worry about the public reading these stories, so the Biden administration doesn’t see a risk here.

3. The Washington Post profiles a single mother from Wyoming and her struggles to raise her son without “toxic masculinity,” which she apparently heard about from the internet or something. It’s fascinating both for its insight into how screwed up people at the bottom of our society are, and also how these people and their problems are understood by liberal elites. This woman has struggled with meth, bounces around from boyfriend to boyfriend, and recently got a tattoo on her face. Obviously, her problems are some combination of low IQ, poor impulse control, and lack of self-awareness. To a liberal journalist though, she’s a victim of patriarchy. The conservative response that it would be desirable to give these people “meaning” might have something to it, but I don’t see any evidence they know how to do that.