More on the Vibes Shift, Alexander the Great, Elderly Mobsters, and More

Links for January 2025

Below are links and subscriber tweets for the month of January. I discuss topics like whether Tiananmen Square was really caused by Chinese students being upset at Africans sleeping with their women; government continuing to persecute frail and elderly mobsters like it’s the 1970s; the least bad case against euthanasia I've ever read; and the best article I’ve ever read demonstrating what makes Russia so much more backwards and corrupt than Western countries.

I’ve been enjoying doing livestreams on Substack lately. There is one scheduled with Noah Smith next Wednesday at 3PM ET, so make sure to join us for that.

There’s been some media coverage of my writing on DEI and Trump’s executive order. See Semafor and The Wall Street Journal.

On to the links. Remember, you can get these posts in real time by paying $3/a month on X.

1. Propecia, the most effective hair loss drug, was discovered when scientists started studying reports that girls were turning into boys in the Dominican Republic.

As it turns out, these kids were actually boys who were born with female-looking genitalia. But then they went through puberty. They were known as “Guevedoces,” which means “penis at 12.” The Guevedoces did not see their prostates grow or lose their hair as adults. Using this knowledge to replicate the natural enzyme deficiency responsible for this, Merck made a prostate shrinking drug, which also worked to prevent hair loss.

2. Dispatch from Korea early in the month begins with the story of a 72 year-old man who says he's willing to die for Yoon Suk Yeol.

The protestors on his side are older churchgoers who adhere to conspiracy theories and have been radicalized by the internet, including YouTubers. The parallels to MAGA are obvious. They even hold signs that say "Stop the Steal"! Yoon's followers are called “taegeukgi budae,” which means "national-flag brigade."

This is a fascinating case of convergent evolution. Young and educated go left, the right is able to build a fanbase of isolated old people with too much time on their hands. You might want to add angry and alienated young men to the right-wing geezer-led coalition. Dementia and pensions are the fuels of right-wing politics, and intellectuals and activists seek ways to direct it. This obviously is not a model of all democratic countries at the moment, but the fact that the US and South Korea ended up with similar dynamics is intriguing and may indicate that they're just ahead of the curve.

3. Zuckerberg briefed Stephen Miller on Meta doing away with their DEI policy before it happened. He also promised him that he would do nothing to obstruct Trump's agenda.

There's been a long-standing debate in political thought about corporate power versus political power. Seeing how quickly Silicon Valley has shifted under Trump and as soon as conservatives started going after wokeness confirms what many of us pro-market types have always said, which is that political power is the real thing.

“Economic power” is nonsense. Private companies at their most powerful are institutions you are free to deal with or not. No company has a monopoly on the essentials of life. They can't force you to for a second do anything you don't want to do, whether as a consumer or employee. Meanwhile, a midlevel bureaucrat can make your life a nightmare on a whim.

Retire the idea of "economic power," except in the sense that financial elites can use money to purchase government favors, or shape public opinion to determine political outcomes, as Elon has done by buying X. In either case, it is government power that is the essence, and money is just a means to influence it. Economic power resulting just from being big or having a lot of money is not real.

On a similar note, Zuck also just agreed to pay Trump $25 million for banning him from Meta.

4. One of the most insightful pieces I’ve read on populism in a long time. Milei and Bukele are solving real problems. MAGA’s “problems” are to a large extent imaginary and if they got their way on immigration, Americans’ living standards would decrease. So Texas ships migrants to Martha’s Vineyard but won’t require E-Verify for private business. Populism as a kind of ignorant grunting while we get pro-market policies is a good outcome. Everyone should subscribe to the Chasing Sheep Substack by the way. One of the best small newsletters out there.

5. I decided to pick up an Alexander biography after listening to the latest Hardcore History. I chose the Philip Freeman one because that was the first that popped up in my Audible app, so I got both the audio and the book.

No other historical figure makes me feel this ambivalent. There is no one close in terms of military accomplishments. Alexander conquered Persia in its entirety. You know how you watch a show like Breaking Bad, and the protagonist is a genius, and you keep thinking that there’s no way he's going to get out of this latest mess, yet he always finds a way? And then you start to think come on, the laws of probability have to catch up with the guy eventually.

That’s the story of Alexander. On more than one occasion, he’ll encounter some hill people on some plain in the sky who think they’re completely safe from the Macedonians, and then Alexander will just lead his men up steep cliffs and strike them down. Or he’ll travel in winter through one of the most dangerous mountain paths in the world, which even the locals fear, and outflank his enemies. The people of Tyre in modern Lebanon thought they were safe because they were on an island and Alexander had no real navy, but then he put one together and built a causeway to reach them while under constant attack. The causeway to this day connects the city to mainland Lebanon.

Here’s the map of his journey from the book.

Alexander achieves one miraculous victory over another as he goes through Greece, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Babylonia, Persia, Bactria, Sogdia, and finally India. He faces every kind of geographical challenge, from snowstorms to treks through the desert and monsoons. All along the way he interacted with ancient cultures and learned about the customs of the great civilizations of the known world. Yet the guy was clearly a murderous psychopath. There was no ideological project. He was Alexander, he wanted to conquer the world, and that was all there was to it. Villages that surrendered were sometimes treated well, but their inhabitants were also sometimes slaughtered. It doesn’t do to say he was a product of his time, because some of Alexander's actions were shocking even among his contemporaries. For example, the sacking of Thebes was considered a stain on his reputation. See also this passage regarding the aftermath of his victory at Granicus.