Five Things: US Economy, Constitutional Crash, Hanseatic League, Railroad Job, Soft Skills
It's Sunday, again.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things!
I spent this week in Tel Aviv and came back Thursday evening with a terrible cold, which German wifes usually describe as the “deadly men’s flu”, because husbands complain too much about their fate. And yes, I do feel shitty right now and I have snot in my brain while I type this.
Tel Aviv was awesome, it is one of my favorite cities in the world. I had last been there in September of 2022 and it was good to reconnect with many friends and business partners and to meet lots of new people. I also had the most amazing food. Tel Aviv felt different with “Bring them home now!” signs at virtually every street corner, with memorials for the victims of October 7 and demonstrations agains Netanyahu. And while it felt different in Tel Aviv, it also felt familiar. The city has a certain vibe to it, it is an amazing tech hotspot and all the people I met were trying to advance tech in one way or another, mostly in AI, Cybersecurity or Defensetech. I love the atmosphere and I love the way the city changes between really old in Yafo, then some old settlements from a hundred years ago in Tel Aviv, to a few thousand Bauhaus buildings to some brutalist architecture of the 60s and 70s to plenty of new highrises that have been built in the last decade. It is an amazing city. And as a German, I do have lots of so called “Kopfkino” - a cinema in my head - where I think about what would have happened if. What if Germany didn’t elect the Nazis to power and kill 6 million jews and drive its intelligentia away? There are thousands more Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv alone than in all of Germany. At my university in Göttingen, the list of Nobel laureates abruptly stops and when I went to study in Berkeley I could see the list being continued there. And then I step into the elevator in a hotel and an elderly couple enters and does some smalltalk and the woman wants to know where we are from. “Oh, Hamburg, we were recently there. The stepping stone for my grandfather was unveiled.” - abruptly the what if ends and I am standing in an elevator with somebody whose grandfather was killed by Germans, just because he was a jew. I didn’t know what to say.
I hope that Israel will find real peace with its neighbors in the region soon. It would uplift the Middle East and could create an economic boom leading to much more prosperity. The war in Gaza has been going on for far too long and until the hostages will be free, I don’t think it will stop. On Thursday morning at 4:00 my sleep was interrupted by a siren, which was a precautious alarm as the Houthis fired a rocket from Yemen that got intercepted by the Iron Dome before it could enter Israeli airspace. When we were sitting in the plane waiting for take-off, three rockets were fired from Gaza. So I got two alerts on one day, which was scary enough for me. I can’t imagine what it is like to live in a country with constant terrorist threats from Iranian proxies. And yet, Israel ranks 8th in the latest Global Happiness Index, Germany is at 22 and we have experienced a lifetime of peace and prosperity.
Anyhow, so much about my latest trip to Tel Aviv, here are five articles I picked for you to read this week.
Trump’s Economics—and America’s Economy
“In the longer run, systematic deregulation will degrade economic performance. Not all regulation is effective. But quite distinct from its social and health benefits, effective regulation serves the interests of advanced businesses, including in manufacturing, by forcing old, dirty, and unsafe technologies and low-wage competitors out. Trump’s government, like others before it, is—unfortunately for its own declared strategy—in the hands of the reactionary branch of the business elite.” - I just checked our egg prices today in the grocery store: they were higher than before inflation hit Germany when Russia attacked Ukraine, but still far away from double digits.
America's "Constitutional Crash"
“The Constitution is designed, famously, as an interlocking system of checks and balances, where any two of the other branches have oversight and authorities to act to overcome abuses of the third branch. The Founders had always envisioned that in a constitutional order, the holders of each of those offices would protect their own branch’s powers and prerogatives. It was a relatively safe bet—after all, it takes savvy and skill to make it to the top of the political heap and once there, who would willingly just give up that power to others?
But right now all three branches have stepped far outside of those lines and already abdicated key portions of its powers to others never imagined by the constitutional order.
We need to be honest and clear about where we are. This isn’t a constitutional crisis—this is a constitutional crash.” - it’s scary to see what’s going on the USA right now.
The rise and fall of the Hanseatic League
My family is from Lübeck, which used to be the Queen of the Hanse, the most important city of that time in Northern Europe. Not everyone has accepted the lesser role Lübeck has been playing in the last few hundred years. The Hanseatic League was quite an achievement to enable trade in medieval times, establishing trade routes across Northern Europe.
I’d Had Jobs Before, but None Like This
“Over the next couple of days, my general fear of heights and my more specific fear of falling off a telegraph pole began to subside. I managed to climb a 20-foot pole. And then a 30-foot pole. I began to get cocky, and in an attempt to scramble up one of the taller poles, I slipped near the top and shot straight down. In my shock and embarrassment, I didn’t notice it at first, but I had torn the front of my shirt and ripped big patches of skin off my chest. One of the patches held the few chest hairs I had grown by this point in my life. Herb took me to the reefer car. He cleaned off the blood and put a block of ice on my chest, which eased the pain. Then he wrapped my chest in a bandage. The skin began to heal in a couple of weeks, and within months was back to normal. And lo, where there had been a few sprigs, something approaching actual chest hair began to appear.” - I also had weird jobs when I was in my 20s, but not like that.
Going Soft
“Our current soft-skills panic, however, is not merely a vintage tactic of oppression from the Seventies, but also a folk remedy for distinctly contemporary social problems. While often described as an aftereffect of the pandemic, the “crisis” is also forward-looking, aided by McKinsey’s claim that soft skills will make businesses “future-proof,” as if sealing them against the biblical floods to come.” - I think you can learn how to fake soft skills, but not more.
That’s it. Have a great Sunday! If you missed last Sunday’s edition of Five Things, have a look here:
— Nico