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The Slow Pace Of TB Research
Antibiotic resistance is a complex and many-tentacled beast—countless factors from overprescription to antibiotic use in livestock have contributed to it. But in considering the rise of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in particular, it's important to note that we are in this mess first and foremost because we stopped trying to develop new treatments for tuberculosis. The real issue is not that TB is uncommonly good at selecting for resistance. The real problem is that in the forty-six years between 1966 and 2012, we developed no new drugs to treat tuberculosis.
In the last couple decades as economic incentives have shifted, we've been able to develop powerful new medications to treat TB, including bedaquiline and delamanid. When markets tell companies it's more valuable to develop drugs that lengthen eyelashes than to develop drugs that treat malaria or tuberculosis, something is clearly wrong with the incentive structure.
Section: 4, Chapter: 14
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Housing Affordability: When Public Financing Makes Things Worse
In San Francisco, Tahanan is a 145-unit permanent supportive housing complex for the chronically homeless. Built in three years for less than $400,000 per unit, it stands in stark contrast to typical affordable housing projects in the Bay Area that take twice as long and cost up to $700,000 per unit.
Tahanan's secret? It used private funding from Charles and Helen Schwab to avoid the regulatory requirements triggered by public money. These include local business enterprise requirements, arts commission review, disability office review, and complex financing arrangements that typically require affordable housing projects to secure multiple funding sources, each with their own compliance demands.
The result is a paradox: using public funds intended to make housing more affordable actually makes it more expensive and slower to build. As Rebecca Foster of the Housing Accelerator Fund explained, project delays can cascade: 'It might mean that you miss a financing deadline and have an adjuster on your tax credit fees that are another $2 million.'
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
The Environmental Crisis That Inspired Regulatory Reform
The environmental devastation of mid-century America was severe and tangible. In 1943, Los Angeles residents woke to air so dark they feared a Japanese gas attack. In 1948, a lethal smog in Donora, Pennsylvania killed twenty people. In Cleveland, the Cuyahoga River became so polluted it caught fire in 1969.
In Pittsburgh, drivers used windshield wipers to clear away soot so they could see the road. The Merrimack River in New Hampshire ran different colors depending on which dyes textile mills were dumping that day.
This visible destruction spurred the environmental movement, culminating in the first Earth Day in 1970 when 20 million Americans—roughly 10% of the population—demonstrated for environmental protection. This wasn't partisan; Republican President Richard Nixon created the EPA and signed the Clean Air Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and Endangered Species Act.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Traditional Knowledge Offers Alternatives To Extractivism
The chapter suggests that traditional Indigenous knowledge offers an alternative to extractivism. Indigenous cultures have long seen the earth as a living, sacred being rather than an inert resource.
For example, the Indigenous Bolivian concept of "buen vivir" or "living well" rejects consumerism and emphasizes living in harmony with nature's limits. This philosophy has inspired new constitutions in Bolivia and Ecuador that enshrine the rights of nature.
Policymakers should look to partner with Indigenous communities and learn from traditional ecological knowledge in charting a path beyond fossil fuels. Rather than seeing Indigenous lands as sacrifice zones for extraction, their sovereignty and land rights should be protected. And Indigenous communities should be empowered as leaders of the next economy.
Section: 1, Chapter: 6
Book: This Changes Everything
Author: Naomi Klein
Bureaucracy Does Not Equal Good Governance
America's government processes have become so complex that they've begun to undermine the very goals they were designed to achieve. Nicholas Bagley, a law professor who served as Michigan Governor Whitmer's chief counsel, argues that liberals have developed a counterproductive 'procedure fetish.'
'Inflexible procedural rules are a hallmark of the American state,' Bagley writes. 'The ubiquity of court challenges, the artificial rigors of notice-and-comment rulemaking, zealous environmental review, pre-enforcement review of agency rules, picayune legal rules governing hiring and procurement, nationwide court injunctions—the list goes on and on.'
These procedures were created with good intentions—to ensure legitimacy and accountability. But they've grown so cumbersome that they prevent government from effectively addressing urgent problems, undermining public trust rather than building it.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Direct Observation Therapy
A major component of the DOTS (Directly Observed Therapy, Short-Course) protocol was that patients would be "directly observed" taking their medication each day by someone other than a family member. Often, this means patients have to make their way to a clinic each day in order to receive their medication and be observed while swallowing the pills to ensure compliance.
It's very common to hear that one of the biggest drivers of drug resistance is patients "failing to take their meds." This so-called "patient noncompliance" is indeed a central factor driving antibiotic resistance to tuberculosis. For a variety of reasons, many patients struggle to complete their lengthy antibiotic regimens, thereby giving the infection more opportunities to evolve resistance to treatment. When I asked TB expert Dr. Jennifer Furin about this protocol and forcing people to be visually observed taking their pills each day, she told me, "I know of no other field of medicine where therapy is based so completely on lack of trust toward patients."
Section: 4, Chapter: 13
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Make Friendly And Unique Faces
Speck provides some key rules for creating engaging ground floor facades:
- Ban blank walls and mirror glass windows. Mandate a minimum percentage of transparency.
- Prohibit parking lots in front of buildings. Tuck them behind or wrap them with habitable space.
- Limit storefront widths and require vertical articulation to create visual interest
- Encourage creativity and uniqueness in signage, awnings, merchandise displays
- Codify these rules into zoning to require them by right. Don't settle for conventional chain store designs - they can adapt to walkable formats if required.
Section: 2, Chapter: 9
Book: Walkable City
Author: Jeff Speck
The Biomedical Vs. Social Understanding Of Disease
We can understand the history of tuberculosis as a story of competing paradigms: These days, we primarily see tuberculosis through a biomedical lens—as an infection caused by a bacterium and cured by drugs designed to kill or otherwise inhibit that bacterium. Others view TB through a religious paradigm or a hereditary one or a sociological lens, as an illness caused by poverty and marginalization.
The biomedical paradigm has become so powerful in my imagination that it's easy to forget how inadequate mere medicine can be. Yes, illness is a breakdown, failure, or invasion of the body treated by medical professionals with drugs, surgeries, and other interventions. But it is also a breakdown and failure of our social order, an invasion of injustice. The "social determinants of health" cannot be viewed independently of the "healthcare system," because they are essential facets of healthcare.
Section: 6, Chapter: 23
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
"Abortion Leads To Less Crime"
"Our theory does not suggest that the legalization of abortion can account for all of the decline in crime. Clearly, many other factors may also be at play: a strong economy, increases in the number of police, and the rising prison population, among them. But legalized abortion should not be overlooked. It was perhaps the single most important event of the last half century in leading to the abrupt and unexpected decline in crime that the United States has experienced."
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Book: Freakonomics
Author: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Japan's Anti-Obesity Secret Weapon - Group Accountability?
Every Japanese workplace has a shocking anti-obesity ritual - mandatory annual weigh-ins and waistline checks for every employee. It's a group accountability practice unthinkable in the individualistic West. At first glance it seems dystopian, even unethical - a violation of body privacy and autonomy.
But the results are undeniable - Japan boasts stunning population-level leanness and health even as other rich nations balloon in weight. There may be a lesson here in hacking "social contagion" for good - making healthy choices the "easy" default through shared commitment, support, and positive peer pressure. What if we stopped framing body size as a purely personal, private affair and started treating it as a collective, public health responsibility?
Section: 1, Chapter: 12
Book: Magic PIll
Author: Johann Hari
The STP Initiative
TB activists and researchers have developed a comprehensive plan—and yes, of course it has an acronym: STP (Search, Treat, Prevent). The STP initiative would hire healthcare workers to Search for cases household by household around the world, diagnosing cases of TB before they become so serious or disabling as to require hospitalization. It would then Treat those diagnosed with a four-month course of antibiotics for most patients, and a six-month course for those with multidrug-resistant TB. And lastly, this program would Prevent further lines of infection by offering one month of preventive therapy to all those living in the same household as a person diagnosed with TB, because that preventive therapy helps to end the chain of transmission.
If we spent twenty-five billion dollars on comprehensive care per year, we could drive tuberculosis toward elimination. We'd also save a lot of money in the long run—over forty dollars for each of those twenty-five billion dollars.
Section: 6, Chapter: 23
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Universal Basic Income As A Solution
One proposed solution to the threat of mass unemployment caused by automation is universal basic income (UBI):
- The government would tax a portion of the immense wealth generated by artificial intelligence and use it to provide all citizens with a guaranteed livable income, regardless of whether they work or not.
- This could help prevent mass joblessness from leading to total economic and social collapse. Even if most people lost their jobs to machines, they would still have enough income to meet their basic needs and consume products and services.
- UBI could be combined with universal free education, enabling the unemployed to gain new skills for the remaining human jobs. It could also be supplemented with socially useful make-work or jobs focused on human interaction.
- However, UBI may not give unemployed people a sense of meaning and social status previously provided by jobs. Societies may need to radically change how they view work, leisure and the purpose of life as automation progresses.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Book: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Walkability Depends On Getting Cars Under Control in Cities
For most of human history, cities were built around people. But for the past century, most American cities have been redesigned around the needs of the automobile, with disastrous results for walkability. Pedestrians cannot thrive in cities where cars are given priority in the allocation of space, speed, and subsidies.
While cars are useful and necessary in cities, they must be tamed and controlled, not given free reign, if walkers are to flourish. This isn't about being "anti-car", but about balance. Great walking cities like New York, London and Paris have plenty of cars, but have established rules that keep them from dominating the environment and harming pedestrians.
Section: 2, Chapter: 1
Book: Walkable City
Author: Jeff Speck
The Public Interest Versus Private Platforms
For most of the 20th century, media was governed by a bipartite regulatory framework reflecting the distinct roles of different communication systems. Personal correspondence through mail, telephones, and telegrams was protected by the secrecy-of-correspondence doctrine. Broadcasting was regulated by the public-interest standard, which recognized that access to airwaves was a privilege requiring service to the community.
The internet dismantled this framework. When the Supreme Court struck down an anti-obscenity provision for the internet in 1997, Justice Stevens reasoned that the web wasn't like broadcasting since users "seldom encounter content accidentally." This decision exempted internet platforms from public interest obligations while also abandoning privacy protections. The result: a communication system with unprecedented reach operating with minimal accountability to society.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Superbloom
Author: Nicholas Carr
Expense Freedom Requires Context And Consequences
Granting expense freedom doesn't mean zero oversight. It requires context upfront and checks afterward.
- Set Context: Explain the 'Act in Netflix's Best Interest' rule. A useful test: 'Imagine explaining this purchase to your boss and the CFO. If you'd feel comfortable, proceed. If not, check first or buy cheaper.'
- Monitor: Managers can review monthly expense summaries, or rely on finance audits (e.g., 10% annually).
- Enforce Consequences: If someone abuses the freedom, fire them immediately and openly communicate the situation (without shaming). This reinforces the importance of responsibility.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: No Rules Rules
Author: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
The Principle of Legitimacy
For the law to be effective, it must be seen as legitimate by the population. Legitimacy has three components:
- People must feel they have a voice, and that if they speak up, they will be heard.
- The law must be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today.
- The authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.
When the British were seen as violating these principles in Northern Ireland, it created an opening for the IRA to position themselves as the legitimate authority in Catholic areas. Authority isn't just about power - it's about getting people to want to submit to your power. Establishing legitimacy is a precondition for authority to function.
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
Book: David and Goliath
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
The Impossible Reform
Despite growing awareness of social media's harmful effects, meaningful reform faces nearly insurmountable obstacles. European privacy regulations allow citizens to opt out of personalization, but few choose to—we've grown accustomed to trading personal information for tailored content and services. Breaking up tech giants through antitrust action may intensify competition but won't change the technological trajectory.
"Frictional design" advocates propose various constraints: limits on message forwarding, delays before posts appear, fees for mass broadcasts, and bans on infinite scrolls. But historical evidence shows that once people adapt to greater efficiency, reductions feel intolerable—particularly in a culture programmed for ease and speed.
As technology historian Thomas Hughes observed, complex technological systems resist alteration once established. Society shapes itself to the system rather than vice versa. The opportunity to influence social media's design has already passed.
Section: 3, Chapter: 10
Book: Superbloom
Author: Nicholas Carr
TB Compounded By HIV Crisis
Beginning in the early 1980s, physicians and activists in the Global South began sounding the alarm about an explosion in uncommonly swift and severe cases of tuberculosis. Young patients were dying within weeks instead of over years, often with TB disseminating throughout their lungs with terrifying speed, choking patients to death.
These deaths seemed to be associated with the emerging pandemic now known as HIV/AIDS. In 1985, physicians noted high rates of active tuberculosis disease among HIV-positive patients in Zaire and Zambia. Because untreated HIV lowers resistance to infection, TB infections are far more likely to progress to active disease as the immune system weakens, and that weakened immune system allows TB to kill quickly. Even though many were pointing out this connection, far too little was done to expand access either to TB or HIV medication in low- and middle-income countries.
Section: 5, Chapter: 19
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
The Economics Of TB Treatment
Analyses of cost-effectiveness often only run skin deep. When looking at the larger costs—the cost of the ineffective pills, the cost of potentially further spreading drug-resistant TB, the cost of hospitalizing a kid who should've been in school, and all the other costs of not getting kids access to proper testing—GeneXpert tests should be in every clinic in every country with a high burden of TB.
From that perspective, investing in tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment begins to look like one of the best bets in global health. A 2024 study commissioned by the WHO found that every dollar spent on tuberculosis care generates around thirty-nine dollars in benefit by reducing the number (and expense) of future TB cases, and through more people being able to work rather than being chronically ill or caring for their chronically ill loved ones.
Section: 4, Chapter: 15
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
The Cobra Effect - Why Child Car Seats Don't Work
Child car seats are a well-intentioned innovation, mandated by law in all 50 U.S. states. But a closer look at the data reveals they are shockingly ineffective at their stated goal of reducing child auto fatalities:
- Federal studies find car seats are only about 2% more effective at preventing fatalities than regular seatbelts
- Observational data shows that 80-90%+ of car seats are installed or used incorrectly, rendering them ineffective
- Car seat laws "crowd out" potentially more impactful solutions like driver safety training or stronger DUI enforcement
The authors dub this "the cobra effect" after an apocryphal tale of how a bounty on cobra skins backfired when people started breeding cobras. The lesson is that even the most well-meaning attempts to solve problems through legislation can have perverse unintended consequences. Policymakers must rigorously evaluate actual efficacy using data, not just rely on good intentions. More broadly, this story cautions against top-down mandates and argues for locality in problem-solving.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Super Freakonomics
Author: Steven D. Levitt , Stephen J. Dubner
The Key to Making Streets Safer Is Slowing Cars
Many traffic safety campaigns aimed at pedestrians - "wear bright clothing," "cross at the signal," etc. - implicitly blame the victim. They ignore the fact that streets are dangerous by design: built to prioritize maximum vehicle speed over pedestrian safety.
To reduce traffic deaths, we must address the root cause of reckless driving: streets designed like highways. Pedestrian fatalities aren't due to a lack of caution or personal responsibility among walkers. They're a direct result of wide lanes, long blocks, sweeping curves and other design factors that induce speeding and risky driving. Truly protecting pedestrians means fundamentally reshaping streets to slow cars down, not just cushioning walkers from the threat.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Book: Walkable City
Author: Jeff Speck
The Importance of Framing in Public Policy
The principles of framing and mental accounting have significant implications for public policy:
Choice architecture: Policymakers can design choices in a way that nudges people towards decisions that serve their own long-term interests, without restricting freedom of choice.
Disclosure policies: Information about risks and benefits should be presented in a clear, simple, and understandable format to help people make informed decisions.
Regulation of marketing practices: Firms should be discouraged from using manipulative framing tactics to exploit consumers' biases and vulnerabilities.
Section: 4, Chapter: 34
Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow
Author: Daniel Kahneman
The Hidden Gender Bias in Tax Systems
Tax systems around the world often have implicit or explicit gender biases that disadvantage women and reinforce gender inequalities:
- Joint filing of income taxes for married couples, as practiced in many countries like the US, can create a "marriage penalty" for women, as their income is taxed at a higher marginal rate than if they filed individually.
- Tax credits or deductions for dependent spouses, as provided in countries like the UK and Japan, can discourage women's labor force participation and reinforce traditional gender roles.
- Consumption taxes like VAT often apply to goods and services that women disproportionately consume, such as childcare, menstrual products, and basic necessities, making them more regressive for women.
- Tax systems that favor capital gains, property, and corporate income over labor income tend to benefit men, who own more wealth and assets than women.
- Lack of sex-disaggregated data and gender analysis in tax policy-making means that these biases often go unrecognized and uncorrected.
Section: 5, Chapter: 13
Book: Invisible Women
Author: Caroline Criado Perez
Broken Windows Theory: The Power Of Context
The Broken Windows theory argues that crime is the inevitable result of disorder:
- If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge
- This sends a signal that anything goes and the sense of anarchy spreads
- Relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and panhandling are "small cracks" that invite more serious crimes
"The impetus to engage in a certain kind of behavior does not come from a certain kind of person but from a feature of the environment."
An epidemic can be tipped by tiny changes in context, in the same way that New York's crime epidemic tipped when the police began fixing "broken windows" like graffiti and fare-beating.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Book: The Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
COMPAS Recidivism and Algorithmic Fairness
In 2016, a ProPublica investigation into the COMPAS criminal risk assessment tool concluded the tool was biased against Black defendants. Their analysis found that Black defendants who did not reoffend were 2x more likely to be classified as high-risk compared to White defendants.
The makers of COMPAS, Northpointe, countered that the model was equally accurate for White and Black defendants and had the same false positive rates for each risk score level, so could not be biased.
This sparked a heated debate in the algorithmic fairness community. A series of academic papers showed that the two notions of fairness - equal false positive rates and equal accuracy across groups - are mathematically incompatible if the base rates of the predicted variable differ across groups.
The COMPAS debate crystallized the realization that there are multiple conceptions of algorithmic fairness that often cannot be simultaneously satisfied. It brought the issue into the public eye and kickstarted the field of fairness in machine learning.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: The Alignment Problem
Author: Brian Christian
Environmental Laws vs. Environmental Progress
Environmental laws created to protect nature are now often the biggest obstacle to building the clean energy infrastructure needed to address climate change. A 2023 study called 'The Greens' Dilemma' highlighted this contradiction:
'The US government is helpless as an investor in new technologies. One useful summary of this view came from a 2012 Economist essay, which claimed "governments have always been lousy at picking winners, and they are likely to become more so, as legions of entrepreneurs and tinkerers swap designs online [and] turn them into products."'
This dual image—the state, as a lazy slowpoke, versus the market, as the self-sufficient dynamo of innovation—bears little resemblance to history.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Pull Funding: A Better Way to Accelerate Innovation
When funding innovation, governments typically use 'push funding' - giving money upfront for research and development. But there's another approach called 'pull funding' that can be more effective for certain challenges.
While push funding pays for effort, pull funding pays for success. It works by promising to purchase products once they meet specified criteria. This approach solves a common barrier to innovation: demand uncertainty. Companies are often reluctant to invest in developing products if they're unsure whether there will be sufficient market demand.
One powerful form of pull funding is the Advance Market Commitment (AMC). In 2007, the Gates Foundation and several countries offered pharmaceutical companies $1.5 billion to develop pneumococcal vaccines for low-income countries. By 2020, hundreds of millions of doses had been purchased and distributed, saving approximately 700,000 lives.
This model could be applied to other urgent challenges like carbon removal technology or green cement, guaranteeing a market for effective solutions and accelerating their development.
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Small Number Of "Super-Prescribers" Write Huge Share Of Opioid Rxs
The opioid epidemic was fueled by a tiny minority of doctors who prescribed huge volumes of the drugs, responding to pharma company marketing. During the height of the crisis, analysis shows that:
- The top 1% of prescribers wrote 49% of opioid prescriptions
- Some wrote over 1,000 times more Rxs than the average doctor
These "super-prescribers" - numbering just a few thousand nationwide - enabled widespread misuse, while most doctors prescribed cautiously. Gladwell argues any successful response to such crises requires identifying and intervening with the most extreme "superspreaders."
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Book: Revenge of the Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Democracy by Lawsuit: The Unintended Legacy of Environmental Law
In the 1960s, attorney Ralph Nader became famous for exposing how car manufacturers resisted safety improvements while blaming individual drivers for accidents. His work led to the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act and inspired young activists known as 'Nader's Raiders' to create a movement focused on suing the government to force better regulations.
These efforts helped pass crucial environmental laws like the Clean Water Act. But they also created a system where litigation became the primary tool for achieving progressive goals. Between 1971 and 1973, the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund pursued 77 legal actions, with approximately 70 seeking to block government actions or influence regulatory practices.
While this 'democracy by lawsuit' approach achieved important environmental victories, it also inadvertently created procedural obstacles that now block the very clean energy projects needed to address climate change.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Walkable Cities Save Residents Time and Money While Boosting the Local Economy
The case of Portland, Oregon shows the tremendous financial upside of walkable urbanism for both households and entire metro regions:
- The average Portland resident drives 20% less than their counterparts in other major metros, or about 4 miles less per day. This equates to $1.1 billion in savings per year that residents aren't spending on vehicles.
- Less driving means less time wasted in traffic. Portland residents spend 11 minutes fewer per day stuck in peak hour congestion compared to 10 years ago. The entire region gains $1.5 billion worth of time savings.
- When these savings from reduced car ownership and usage are spent locally, it provides a significant boost to neighborhood businesses. Portland's "Green Dividend" from walkability yields huge economic benefits for the region.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Book: Walkable City
Author: Jeff Speck
Climate Solutions Must Benefit Workers And Communities, Not Just Corporations
To build a strong social mandate for climate action, policies must be designed to tangibly benefit ordinary people. Key strategies include:
- Massive public investments in clean energy and transportation infrastructure, creating millions of good-paying union jobs
- Retraining and transition support for workers in fossil fuel industries
- Regulations requiring local hiring and domestic manufacturing for clean energy projects
- Programs to reduce energy costs for consumers, especially low-income households
- Empowering communities to own and control renewable energy projects, rather than just being passive recipients
Policymakers must resist corporate pressure to design climate policies in ways that benefit big business at the expense of workers and communities. Only a "people first" approach can build a lasting consensus for bold climate action.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Book: This Changes Everything
Author: Naomi Klein
Obesity Rates Have Skyrocketed As America Has Rebuilt Itself Around The Car
Over the past 40 years, the US has undergone an unprecedented obesity epidemic fueled largely by our development patterns:
- In the mid-1970s, only 1 in 10 Americans was obese. By 2007, that number had risen to a shocking 1 in 3 adults, with another third clinically overweight.
- The childhood obesity rate has more than tripled since 1980. 25% of young men and 40% of young women are now too overweight to enlist in the military.
- As recently as 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20%. By 2007, only one state (Colorado) was still under 20%. Several states now exceed 30% of adults.
- Numerous studies have directly linked time spent driving with increased risk of obesity. One study found a 6% rise in likelihood of obesity for each additional hour spent in a car per day.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Walkable City
Author: Jeff Speck
Making Cigarettes Less Compelling
Two strategies to make cigarettes less "sticky" to teens:
1. Lower nicotine levels below the "tipping point" of addiction
- Evidence suggests there is a nicotine threshold below which the chemical "hook" of cigarettes doesn't fully take hold
- By lowering nicotine in cigarettes, smoking becomes more of a casual habit than a physical addiction
2. Raise the age of the "stickiest" customers
- Smokers who start as teens are much more likely to be lifelong smokers
- By delaying the onset of smoking even a few years, the behavior is less likely to become a permanent lifestyle
Though teen smoking is a powerful epidemic, small changes in the stickiness and circumstances of the behavior can have an outsized effect in reversing it. The same factors that cause it to tip can also cause it to collapse.
Section: 1, Chapter: 7
Book: The Tipping Point
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
"Real Men Have Fabs"
The chip industry's landscape has undergone significant changes, moving away from the traditional model of integrated design and manufacturing within a single company. Foundries like TSMC have emerged, offering chip fabrication services to fabless companies that focus solely on design. This shift is driven by the increasing cost and complexity of building and operating fabs, as each generation of technological advancement requires more expensive equipment and expertise.
However, some industry veterans like Jerry Sanders, founder of AMD, remain staunch advocates of the integrated model, believing that owning fabs is essential for maintaining control and ensuring quality. He famously quipped, "Real men have fabs," reflecting a cultural attachment to the traditional way of doing things. However, the economic realities and the success of fabless companies are challenging this mindset.
Section: 6, Chapter: 35
Book: Chip War
Author: Chris Miller
The Climate Dilemma: Growth vs. Degrowth
Two competing visions exist for addressing climate change:
- Degrowth: Argues that endless economic growth is unsustainable and we must accept material sacrifices, especially in wealthy nations. It critiques our relationship with nature as exploitative and calls for a fundamental shift in values.
- Abundance: Contends that human progress requires more clean energy, not less overall energy. It sees technological innovation as key to solving climate challenges while improving living standards globally.
The political challenge of degrowth becomes clear when governments face energy shortages or price spikes. In 2022, protests over fuel prices erupted in 90 countries. When Sri Lanka restricted synthetic fertilizer use, agricultural yields collapsed, contributing to political instability. While degrowth offers a coherent critique, its political viability is questionable when voters consistently reject material sacrifice.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
TB's Vicious Cycles
Tuberculosis is so often, and in so many ways, a disease of vicious cycles: It's an illness of poverty that worsens poverty. It's an illness that worsens other illnesses—from HIV to diabetes. It's an illness of weak healthcare systems that weakens healthcare systems. It's an illness of malnutrition that worsens malnutrition. And it's an illness of the stigmatized that worsens stigmatization.
In the face of all this, it's easy to despair. TB doesn't just flow through the meandering river of injustice; TB broadens and deepens that river.
Section: 5, Chapter: 19
Book: Everything is Tuberculosis
Author: John Green
Everything-Bagel Liberalism: When Good Goals Crowd Out Great Results
Liberal policymaking often suffers from trying to achieve too many worthy goals simultaneously, making it difficult to accomplish any of them effectively. This 'everything-bagel liberalism' adds requirements and standards that each seem reasonable but collectively make projects unworkable.
For example, the 2023 Notice of Funding Opportunity for semiconductor manufacturing asked applicants to prepare 'an equity strategy... to create equitable work force pathways for economically disadvantaged individuals,' develop plans 'to include women and other economically disadvantaged individuals in the construction industry,' provide 'access to child care for facility and construction workers,' and detail how they would include minority-, veteran-, and female-owned businesses in their supply chain.
While each goal is worthy, collectively they create complexity that can delay or derail vital projects. Effective policymaking requires prioritizing what matters most and being willing to make strategic trade-offs.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
Strategies for Gender-Responsive Tax Policy and Advocacy
To create more gender-equitable and pro-poor tax systems, we need:
- Collection and analysis of sex-disaggregated tax data, to identify and address gender biases and impacts in tax policies and practices.
- Gender impact assessments and budgeting of tax policies, to ensure that they promote gender equality and women's rights, and do not exacerbate inequalities.
- Progressive and fair tax systems that tax wealth, assets, and high incomes more than consumption and labor, and that provide adequate revenues for gender-responsive public services and social protection.
- Challenging gender stereotypes and norms that undervalue women's paid and unpaid work, and that justify unequal and unfair tax systems and public spending.
Section: 5, Chapter: 13
Book: Invisible Women
Author: Caroline Criado Perez
The Dangers Of High-Stakes Testing
A significant portion of Chapter 1 is dedicated to exploring how high-stakes standardized testing can lead to cheating by teachers and administrators. As school rankings, funding, and teacher pay started being tied to test results in the 1990s, some teachers began manipulating results by:
- Giving students correct answers during the test
- Filling in answers themselves after the test
- Selectively reporting results from certain students
Mathematical analysis by the authors uncovered cheating in around 5% of classrooms per year in the Chicago Public School system. This shows how incentive schemes can be exploited when the stakes are high enough.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Book: Freakonomics
Author: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Why Netflix Ditched Performance Bonuses
Netflix intentionally avoids pay-per-performance bonuses, common elsewhere. Why?
- Bonuses hinder flexibility: Tying pay to pre-set goals discourages adapting to rapid changes. Employees focus on hitting old targets, not on spotting new opportunities or needs.
- Bonuses don't motivate top performers: High performers are intrinsically driven; dangling extra cash doesn't significantly increase their effort.
- Bonuses decrease creativity: Research shows contingent pay works for routine tasks but harms performance on creative tasks by shifting focus away from free exploration.
- Simpler is better: Putting all compensation into a higher base salary is more transparent and attractive ('a bird in the hand').
Section: 2, Chapter: 4
Book: No Rules Rules
Author: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
Viewing Freedom Negatively Endangers Public Health
Conceiving of freedom as just the absence of government intervention has dangerous consequences for public health.
To become healthier and freer, Americans should:
- Embrace a positive definition of freedom that includes access to healthcare for all
- Understand how lack of universal healthcare coverage constrains freedom by making people fearful and limiting their choices
- Recognize that a right to healthcare has a basis in early American thought, as Jefferson considered health second only to ethics
- Advocate for policies expanding access to preventive care, maternal health services, vaccines and public health
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Book: On Freedom
Author: Timothy Snyder
The Five Factors That Explain The 1990s Crime Drop
According to the authors, there were five key factors that drove the dramatic decline in U.S. crime in the 1990s:
- Increased incarceration - More criminals in prison meant fewer on the streets
- More police - A rising number of police per capita increased the risk of getting caught
- The end of the crack epidemic - Crack markets matured and violence subsided as dealers focused more on customer retention vs. turf wars
- Legalized abortion - Fewer unwanted pregnancies 20 years prior meant fewer children grew up in environments that incline one towards crime
- The strong 1990s economy - Economic growth and low unemployment made crime a relatively less attractive option
However, the authors argue the first four factors account for the lion's share of the crime drop, with abortion alone responsible for as much as 30% of the decline. Improved policing tactics and the innovative CompStat system rolled out in New York City, on the other hand, likely had little impact despite receiving significant media attention.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Book: Freakonomics
Author: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
Covid-19 Illustrates The High Costs Of Managing Uncertainty With Crude Rules
The authors use the example of blanket social distancing rules during the Covid-19 pandemic to illustrate the economic costs of managing uncertainty with rules rather than predictions.
- Social distancing was a crude but effective rule for limiting virus spread in the absence of information on who was infectious
- However, it came at an enormous economic and social cost, disrupting work, education, and social connectivity for everyone rather than just the infectious
- Better predictive tools for identifying infectious individuals, like rapid testing, could have enabled more normal life to continue safely for the majority. Realizing this would have required an "oiled" system able to flexibly adapt based on new information, rather than a "glued" system locked into rigid rules
Section: 3, Chapter: 7
Book: Power and Prediction
Author: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb
Why Many Common Theories For The Crime Drop Are Wrong
The authors debunk several popular theories for why crime fell so sharply in the 1990s:
- Tougher gun laws - Crime fell just as sharply in states without any changes to their gun laws, and the much-touted Brady Act only had a very modest impact
- Increased use of capital punishment - The death penalty is applied too infrequently to have a large impact, and crime fell even in states without capital punishment
- More innovative policing strategies - New York City's "broken windows" policing gets more credit than it likely deserves, as crime fell nationally even in cities that didn't adopt new policing tactics
- The strong economy - The link between economic conditions and violent crime is relatively weak and inconsistent, and the timing doesn't match up (crime was falling before the 1990s boom)
- Younger demographics - Demographic trends actually pointed towards a crime increase in the 1990s as the teenage share of the population rose
By process of elimination, the authors come back to legalized abortion, increased incarceration, more police, and the fading of the crack epidemic as the only factors that can really explain the magnitude and timing of the huge 1990s crime drop.
Section: 1, Chapter: 4
Book: Freakonomics
Author: Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner
China's Chip Strategy: Learning from the Neighbors
To develop its domestic chip industry, China's taking cues from the successful strategies employed by its neighbors: Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea. These strategies include:
- Heavy government subsidies and investment
- Attracting foreign-trained scientists and engineers
- Forging partnerships with foreign firms for technology transfer
- Leveraging competition between foreign companies to secure favorable deals
Section: 7, Chapter: 42
Book: Chip War
Author: Chris Miller
The False Choice Between Building and Conserving
We face critical choices about our future that don't fit neatly into traditional political categories. The right offers a politics of scarcity - focusing on restricting immigration and preserving the status quo. But some on the left also embrace scarcity through degrowth philosophies that see abundance as unsustainable.
A better approach recognizes that abundance isn't just 'more of everything' but rather more of what matters most:
- Build housing that people can afford
- Construct clean energy infrastructure at unprecedented scale
- Streamline government processes without sacrificing core values
- Fund scientific research that takes appropriate risks
- Develop systems to deploy innovations quickly and equitably
This framework focuses on making key resources abundant - energy, housing, transportation, healthcare - while respecting environmental boundaries. It requires liberals to critique their own governance failures while maintaining their commitment to collective action and environmental stewardship.
Section: 1, Chapter: 5
Book: Abundance
Author: Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
The Limits of Power
Both the British Army in Ireland and California's Three Strikes law failed for the same fundamental reason: they were too confident in the utility of their own power. Both the British and California failed to ask themselves, "At what cost? And for how long?" They missed the inverted U-curve. Past a certain point, more force produces less compliance.
More punishment produces less deterrence. The marginal returns diminish, and the unintended consequences mount. Power is like medicine - it has an optimal dose range. Too little, and it's ineffective. Too much, and it becomes toxic. The trick is finding the sweet spot.
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
Book: David and Goliath
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
A Diverse Mix of Housing Options Downtown Benefits Everyone
A robust supply of housing in a variety of types and price points is key to a healthy downtown:
- Having people from all walks of life and income levels makes downtown more vibrant and equitable. Restricting downtown living to only the wealthy is neither fair nor smart.
- In most cities, the majority of current downtown housing is subsidized "affordable housing" isolated in towers and complexes. There is often a "missing middle" of market-rate options for the workforce.
- Two effective tools for providing below-market-rate units are inclusionary zoning, which requires a % of new units to be affordable, and "granny flats" or accessory dwellings added to existing homes.
Section: 2, Chapter: 2
Book: Walkable City
Author: Jeff Speck
Nudging in the UK
The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a.k.a. the "Nudge Unit", was set up in the UK Cabinet Office to apply behavioral science to improve public policy. A key innovation was the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to rigorously test behavioral interventions.
For example, to increase tax collection, BIT ran an RCT sending different reminder letters to taxpayers. The most effective letter used social norms, telling recipients that most people in their town paid taxes on time and they were in the minority that hadn't.
This letter increased payment rates by over 5 percentage points, accelerating £9 million in revenue. The trial cost almost nothing since the letters were being sent anyway. Similar RCTs tested interventions in:
- Encouraging people to join the organ donor registry
- Getting people to pay court fines on time
- Motivating job seekers to attend employment training
The UK's example is spreading, with "nudge units" being set up in governments around the world. RCTs are a crucial tool for evidence-based policy, and behavioral science expands the toolkit of solutions.
Section: 6, Chapter: 33
Book: Misbehaving
Author: Richard Thaler
The Failed Logic of Three Strikes
Three Strikes was built on flawed assumptions about how criminals think. Here's what California could have done instead:
- Target deterrence to the specific triggers of crime (e.g. gun laws, gang prevention).
- Tailor sentences to the actual risk profile of the offender, not a blanket rule.
- Prioritize certainty of punishment over severity.
- Invest in rehabilitation, drug treatment, and job training to reduce recidivism.
California's "tough on crime" approach sounded appealing, but relied on emotion over data. A more targeted strategy could have reduced both crime and incarceration.
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
Book: David and Goliath
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Set Context When Removing Vacation Rules
Simply removing a vacation policy isn't enough; it creates ambiguity. Managers must actively set context to guide employee behavior.
- Discuss appropriate times to take vacation (e.g., avoiding critical periods like month-end close for accountants).
- Establish team parameters (e.g., 'only one person out at a time', 'ensure coverage before booking').
- Provide guidelines on notice periods for different lengths of time off.
Clear context prevents chaos and ensures freedom doesn't negatively impact team performance.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: No Rules Rules
Author: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
From 'Spend As Your Own' To 'Act In Netflix’s Best Interest'
Initially, Netflix replaced complex expense policies with 'Spend company money as if it were your own'. This failed because personal spending habits vary wildly. Some employees were overly frugal, harming potential business impact, while others spent lavishly.
The guideline was simplified to just five words: 'Act in Netflix’s Best Interest'. This provides a clearer framework. Flying business class for a short trip isn't in Netflix's interest, but doing so for a red-eye before a crucial meeting likely is. Employees must use judgment aligned with company benefit.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: No Rules Rules
Author: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
Removing The Vacation Policy
In the information age, what matters is achievement, not hours clocked. Recognizing the inconsistency of tracking vacation days but not hours worked, Netflix removed its vacation policy entirely in 2003. Salaried staff can take off whenever they feel appropriate, for however long, without prior approval or tracking.
This signals trust, boosts responsibility, reduces bureaucracy, and helps attract talent. However, it only works effectively if leaders model taking significant vacations and managers set clear context about expectations and team impact.
Section: 1, Chapter: 3
Book: No Rules Rules
Author: Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
The Inverted U-Curve Between Punishment and Crime
The relationship between punishment and crime follows an inverted U-curve. Increasing punishment and enforcement does deter crime up to a point. But after that point, additional punishment stops producing gains and can even make crime increase again. This is because extremely long sentences have diminishing returns in deterrence, since many criminals are not forward-thinking enough for the difference between a 10 vs. 20 year sentence to matter.
Meanwhile, over-incarceration imposes tremendous collateral damage on communities and families, which can cause crime to go back up. Children with incarcerated parents are much more likely to become criminals themselves. Putting too many people in jail can also overwhelm and delegitimize the justice system in the eyes of the community.
Section: 2, Chapter: 5
Book: David and Goliath
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
How Three Strikes Laws Overshot the Inverted U-Curve
California's 1994 "Three Strikes" law was intended to reduce crime by imposing harsh sentences on repeat offenders. It was championed by Mike Reynolds, whose daughter had been murdered by two career criminals.
The law did initially lead to a drop in crime, as offenders were taken off the streets. However, the costs - both economic and social - soon started to outweigh the benefits. California's prison population exploded, as even minor crimes led to life sentences if they were a "third strike." This proved enormously expensive, and the state soon had to start cutting other vital services, like education, to pay for prisons.
So while a certain degree of harsher sentencing can deter crime, Three Strikes took it too far. It overshot the inverted U-curve, maximizing punishment to the point of diminishing returns.
Section: 3, Chapter: 8
Book: David and Goliath
Author: Malcolm Gladwell
