I wanted to write a year-end retrospective about ways in which my thinking about important topics evolved in 2021. I came into the year with different orientations than I ended the year with. Things that happened either weren’t anticipated, or surprised me in ways that challenged my thinking and called for revision. I have no idea if I will do this in the future, but I would like to think this will be an annual thing and something I can return to later to understand my historical frame of mind.

So, let’s begin.

First…

And that has led me to change my thinking in some important ways. To be fair, no one really saw Delta or Omicron coming when we started 2021. The possibility of variants was a background risk. But I really swung and missed. I was in the Roaring Twenties camp. I predicted that most people would get vaccinated, we would have herd immunity or something like it by the fall, and people would be letting loose and fucking in the streets, hot vaxx summer, etc. Greater epistemic humility was warranted.

Even if I had given proper weight to the risk of variants, I would have been wrong about arguably more important things. For instance:

I am still trying to develop my thoughts here. Crime statistics are a bit of a mixed bag. It seems like violent crime is up meaningfully. Property crime reporting has some serious bias that even some on the left acknowledge, but nevertheless shows declining rates of theft. That doesn’t square with what we see around us, but I think anecdotal evidence is insufficient. My stance currently is that even if overall incidents are down, there is a change in the contours of crime for the worse. It has become more brazen, more public, and more organized. It is being downplayed by the left, although some left moderates seem to have come around to being tougher on crime. I am right there with them. Stolen items are making their way into seedier parts of the city for resale. Open air drug markets and the proliferation of meth and fentanyl are exacerbating a humanitarian crisis that is a key driver of homelessness - another major problem in cities right now. The state needs to take a more forceful, and yes, coercive approach to diverting those with addiction into treatment and punishing people peddling stolen goods and dealing drugs. Empirical evidence is strong that having the presence of cops on foot patrol can reduce crime. Re-investment in policing seems to make a lot of sense, and I feel more strongly about that now than at the beginning of the year. That has made me a bit more alienated from the left and closer to the right. Speaking of which…

With Trump as president, it was really hard to sympathize with anything happening on the right. Performing the kowtow to a megalomaniac was prerequisite to doing anything else, and that toxicity alienated a lot of people like myself who historically have been sympathetic to some right thinking. I am under no illusion that Trump is gone - I fully expect him to be the 2024 Republican nominee (something for a 2024 retrospective) and he still looms large in Republican politics. But his absence from social media and the election off-year of 2021 gave some space for me to feel comfortable casting a more critical eye leftward and a sympathetic one rightward. In general, I agree with Ross that while not every idea is worth a damn, the right seems to have more vigor and is more engaged with the problems of the times, while the left is a bit stuck and backward looking, where diagnoses and solutions are more or less the same as decades ago. I think I will continue to feel more comfortable on the center-right in 2022 and have a mix of nervousness and anticipation about the conservative movement. At least I’m feeling something.

If you squint, you can also see a post-Trump world. I think Ron DeSantis has actually proven to be a capable leader with political acumen. His record on COVID seems to be average, despite what the left says. I am also intrigued by Glenn Youngkin in Virginia. Both of these guys seem like viable alternatives to Trump who can exist within a system rather than being a destabilizing force. Youngkin put together an electorally successful coalition that held the Trump right while bringing in concerned public school parents. He proved that you can be a former financier and political novice, like Trump, except with a welcoming affect and some scintilla of character. Getting kids back to fully open schools gained salience as parents were going back to work. The left and its allies in teachers’ unions were largely responsible for the policies preventing that, which pissed parents off. Despite not being well defined, CRT is a also valid concern for parents. The left dismisses it as racist dog whistling, with predictable electoral consequences.

Speaking of education…

COVID has been really disruptive to college and university life, and it seems like colleges still have no plan for how to deal with it. It’s disrupting for students and is further eroding the value-for-dollar of higher education. Tuition and fees were already exploding, and now the candle is being burned at both ends. Instead of paying exorbitant cost for vibrant campus life, beautiful facilities, and an army of deans and administrators, student are now paying exorbitant cost for spending large parts of the year on zoom (you still get the administrators though).

It seems like campuses are continuing to become worse places for ideological diversity. In any event, it’s hard to make a case that the trajectory is positive. One of the many downsides to the proliferation of administrators on campus seems to be a highly reflexive approach to intervening in student life at the first sign of conflict. I don’t want to overstate the extent of coddling, and it’s not like students are living in a woke tyranny. My only point is that it seems like a much less interesting time to be a student and intellectual life seems to be stale, with no sign of improvement on the horizon.

I was even further dismayed to see the elimination of the SAT and ACT as an admissions requirement gain traction this year. I didn’t expect it, and so am even more pessimistic than at the start of the year. These tests aren’t perfect, but they are objective and the best way for innately bright people who lack other privileges to reach good schools. I expect admissions offices (which have always been trying to insert favoritism and subjectivity into student selection) to pursue policies with worse outcomes.

What else to say? Well, it still sucks to be a grad student. The tenure process and peer review still have perverse incentives, both of which may be increasing ideological rigidity. The university model seems ossified and ripe for disruption, yet there’s a bizarre antagonism to suggesting it - probably because elites benefit from and rely on this system. I have no idea if UATX is going to be successful, but I am confident that higher education desperately needs experimentation and commend anyone who wants to undertake it. I bet you will see more fervor around this from the disgruntled right, which is another reason to be following right thinkers more in 2022. 

Things aligned in 2021 to make me feel better about the health of the republic. After Jan 6, we had a year where some significant legislation got moved through Congress and we went back to having normal fights about the Supreme Court and the filibuster and being pissed at moderate senators. Some off-year elections happened and all was well. More of that please! The Georgia voting law doesn’t seem as bad as some have portrayed it, and while there has been some anti-democratic movement at the state level, things seem…fine? This is all very tentative and I am hedging a bit of my optimism - I expect if Trump loses in 2024 that we may have another crisis, but it’s a big if. The upshot is that it seems like the basic structure of government is holding up okay, even if there’s room for improvement (which neither party actually seems fully invested in).

On the other hand, our government is in pretty bad shape. This is where I gripe again about the the CDC and FDA. These are some glaring examples of what seems to be a broader ossification of thinking and action. The lack of nimbleness, boldness and innovation in the public sector contrasts so starkly with what happened in the private sector during COVID (see below). Politicians too often dithered and deferred to public health bureaucrats who had even less vision and no democratic legitimacy. This year, it became even more obvious that state capacity is in a really bad place here, and that leaves me more worried than ever. My mental model is that government that fails at competency will be valued less by the public, attract less talent and imagination, will beget more incompetence, and spiral down from there. My takeaway from this year is that our government is mostly good at blowing things up with drones (but not actually winning wars) and cutting checks. It’s an insurance company with guns.

Contrasted to the withering of the public sector, I am emboldened by what happened in the private sector this year. Biomedical advances are the obvious example. Besides mRNA vaccines, which are a monumental leap forward, there are other promising research areas. We might cure diabetes in the near future. Protein folding is beyond me but seems like a huge deal. We seem to be getting better at using technology to cure disabilities, which could help give blind people sight again or allow those with impaired motor function to write and recover mobility. There seem to be some really significant advances in battery technology and renewables continue to become cheaper and more economically viable. Nuclear fusion also seems to be closer to a reality, as are modular reactors that could be superior to current reactor designs. Commercially viable supersonic travel seems achievable within a decade. This isn’t showing up in the productivity stats yet, so I am hedging here, but it could be the beginning of the end of the Great Stagnation. I don’t expect government to help much here, sadly, except to cut checks. 

Hardware is much more interesting and important, but on the software front, I am actually feeling worse in one important way - remote work. I have almost completely reversed my stance on remote working this year. I had been very excited about the ability of flexible work to enhance productivity and allow people to structure their lives in ways that better align with their goals and desires. Clearly some of that benefit is going to materialize, but I think that most people will return to the office and find value in spending a majority of the week in a collaborative environment. For now, interfacing over software just isn’t good enough. Maybe the metaverse will change that, but it’s not ready. I also think the odds of job promotion will be improved by physical presence, which will further incentivize it. I think workers who are new to their careers will spend almost all of their time in the office if they hope to climb the ladder, and good people managers will feel obligated to meet them part way.

And lastly…

If I am right, and work arrangements largely revert back to historical trends, then that’s a marginal benefit in favor of San Francisco and other metro areas that benefit from agglomeration effects. I am of the mind that it’s a trivial benefit though. New York, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Boston (I guess?), LA, Atlanta, etc. etc. are attractive in part because good jobs are there, but also because they are fun (except maybe Boston). To be young and making decent money in New York is really great. It’s awesome at any age if you like being close to some of the world’s best dining, theater, museums and retail, and don’t mind trading square footage for it. Unfortunately, quality of life in San Francisco is not improving, and I think that is going to net against the ongoing strength of the Bay Area job market. In 2021 we see that a lot of the out migration of 2020 is permanent. A lot of people left for the suburbs, and that says something bad about the relative appeal of city living. 

Probably the greatest thing to happen to quality of life in 2020 was the outdoor dining parklets. San Francisco has a mild climate, but it’s almost always a bit too cold to enjoy being outside for long periods of time - especially at night. Still, restaurants innovated and were given leeway to make it work, and it did. That should have been a model for an evolved public policy that encourages experimentation and fresh thinking in other areas of concern. Instead, the city spent 2021 drafting 60 pages of regulations for parklets and is now trying to fine restaurant owners because what they constructed is retroactively in violation of newly promulgated codes. My optimism around outdoor spaces is diminished, and I think the treatment the city is giving parklets is generalizable to its approach to governing. It’s really depressing.

Beyond that, there are the crime issues I wrote about above. Homelessness and drug addition are worse, and the city seems more or less aligned with an activist community that thinks intervening in the lives of the homeless and drug addicted is unjust. The most ambitious policy proposal right now seems to be having safe injection sites, which are a palliative, not a solution. Housing is still too scarce. These are problems that are facing a lot of cities but they are amplified here.  

Overall, I expect the next decade to be one in which San Francisco loses more ground to sunbelt cities not just from the standpoint of population growth (which was already happening) but also general livability and fun. San Francisco is becoming a less interesting and enjoyable place, and it may be a few years or more before that changes. I am not going anywhere though, and will gladly carry the torch for the center right pro-cop neoliberals in the meantime. 

I can’t wait to see what 2022 has to offer.