Matt Yglesias

A Valentine From Steven Walt

Steven Walt offers us an international relations perspective on relationships:

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member’s autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.

Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn’t originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.

I bet Man, the State, and War could sell more copies if they wound a way to reposition it as a dating advice book.

Some Recommended Reading

A few items I don’t really have time to blog about but that I basically agree with:

• Matt Corley on conservatives deluding themselves about the popularity of the stimulus bill.
• Ross Douthat on “liberaltarians” and Greg Mankiw.
• Cautionary tales from Japan.
• Josh Marshall on how we’re doomed.

I, Outlier

I should say the reason I picked up Outliers in the first place was that a friend mentioned that he thought it explained something I’d been curious about. Specifically, The Economist proclaimed that Will Wilkinson, Ezra Klein, Megan McArdle, and myself were the public intellectuals of the future. To which I remarked:

I think it would be strange if the main qualification for becoming a high-profile public intellectual in the future is that you had to start a personal blog in 2002 or 2003.

Gladwell’s book is all about why this sort of thing happens. Rob Pitingolo spells out the argument in detail and observes that it’s analogous to Gladwell’s argument about super-rich software entrepreneurs. Except that even successful bloggers don’t really get to be super-rich, and certainly not Bill Gates rich. But it’s a very similar thing where, yes, you need to work hard but also you need to have been the beneficiary of some pretty lucky breaks to even be in a position where you have the possibility of working hard.