To be more precise in a few more words, the article makes two points:
* some papers rely on McEvedy and Jones’ Atlas of World Population History data as the ground truth, when a lot of it is the best educated guess (sometimes the guess is based on basically almost nothing).
* the difference between the "guessed" population and the real population (which do not observe) is not random, which would lead not only to less precise results but also to bias.
The linked Google sheets computes the correlation between the _first difference of_ series 1 and the _first difference_ of series 2, and not the correlation between the series 1 and the series 2.
Correlation is indeed misunderstood by the author.
> In the chart above, Series 1 and Series 2 are both increasing every day together in the same direction, yet they are perfectly negatively correlated.
"Perfectly negatively correlated" as in the correlation is ... 0.982306684.
Well then there are two straightforward questions:
- are the overall costs of plastics (namely pollution and its environmental and health effects) higher than the costs of banning plastics? Seems like a clear yes.
- what are the redistributive effects? Seems like: consumers are net winners (lower health effects, some or all financial costs of switching away from plastics are passed down to consumers through higher prices); some firms are losers (mainly those who produced plastics or used a lot of them) and some are winners (newcomers, producers of no plastics solutions, transporters).
That does not say anything about how much work exists in aggregate. The human population has gone up, so it can be simultaneously be true that the amount of work being done increases even as each worker works fewer hours. As well, this also says nothing about the quality of work, as GDP is going up, so it can also be simultaneously true that the quality of work increases even as each worker works fewer hours.
I think the relevant metric is the amount of work per people, not the agregate amount of work. If tomorrow there's twice as many people but only one more job because of AI, then sure! the agregate amount of work has increased.
> Maybe because you are comparing r-rated action movies with super hero film made by disney.
It's comparing mainstream action movies with mainstream action movies. The fact that those mainstream action movies used to be r-rated and are not anymore is the whole point of the article.
I am not sure how your theory can both explain French people both turning their nose at "authentic arabic shwarma" but cheap kebabs being wildly popular at the same time. They're racist only against the authentic versions of foreign foods?
The very next sentences explain why this is about conspicuous consumption:
> The authors of “Signalling status with luxury goods: the role of brand prominence”, which appeared in the Journal of Marketing in 2010, do so by dividing the rich into two groups: “parvenus”, who want to associate themselves with other rich people and distinguish themselves from have-nots, and “patricians”, who want to signal to each other but not to the masses. They theorise that more expensive luxury goods, aimed at patricians, will have less obvious branding than cheaper ones. Sure enough, they found that Gucci and Louis Vuitton charge more for quieter handbags and Mercedes slaps bigger emblems on its cheaper cars. People who cannot afford luxury but want to look as if they can (“poseurs”) go for big logos: counterfeiters usually copy louder goods.
I think this point is made in Succession where Tom (who is, of course, the most social climbing member of the clan having married into the Roy family and is the only person in the show who actually makes a point that being rich is awesome) comments on the "ludicrously capacious" bag of the friend of his sidekick.
What is deeply amusing is that the whole "ludicrously capacious" meme has taken off to the point where you can buy large bags with "ludicrously capacious" on them.
You need to have journalism as a regular, paid activity, in a press company, from which most of your income comes. There is a committee of journalists & press companies representatives that review applications.
* some papers rely on McEvedy and Jones’ Atlas of World Population History data as the ground truth, when a lot of it is the best educated guess (sometimes the guess is based on basically almost nothing).
* the difference between the "guessed" population and the real population (which do not observe) is not random, which would lead not only to less precise results but also to bias.