In which I document my efforts to embrace incremental progress in all areas of my life.
I write about my life, mental health, writing, and whatever else suits my mind at the moment!
You can also find my old Unofficial Economist blog posts here (search by category “Unofficial Economist”).
My father keeps telling me, “Climate change will be the biggest challenge of your generation.”
Over email: “Have you read this article? Uninhabitable Earth seems like a book you should read.”
On a hike: “If you want to do something big, you should study the climate.”
Popping up in the background when I’m FaceTiming my mother: “Did you read that article I sent you?”
Okay, okay, padre. So I’m looking into it.
Some initial notes on one climate change-development paper:
Crick, Eskander, Fankhauser & Diop 2018
It’s just one small peak into what’s being researched, just a taste of the questions out there, but I already have so many questions:
1994 Canada – born!
1995 US – moved to NY then NC
2007 UK (England) – visited Mom’s family
2007 Kenya – visited close family friends
2015 Rwanda – summer internship
2015 Uganda – vacation from summer internship
2015 India – study abroad
2016 France – visiting friend studying abroad
2016 Italy – visiting friend studying abroad
2016 Netherlands – vacation with friends studying abroad in Europe
2017 Zambia – on-boarding to new job
2018 Liberia – work trip
2018 Zimbabwe – Victoria Falls half-marathon with boyfriend
2018 South Africa – work trip
2018 Spain – visiting brother Max studying abroad
2018 Germany – random 12-hour layover
Plan for 2019: Mexico
The Unofficial Economist name reflects the fact that I want to start working on and practicing economics, thinking deeply about it, but I’m only an aspirant to graduate-level training so far.
Being ~unofficial~ allows me room to experiment, take guesses, and dig into economic ideas that interest me, without too much pressure to get it completely right yet.
The blog is really a conglomeration of everything that’s interested me (and that I’ve found time to write about) since April 2018. I try my hand at interpreting economic papers and development blog posts; I send news / proof of life to my parents via the life updates section; I recommend books and podcasts; and I share other bits of my life, like the Bollywood dances I’ve been practicing.
The menu to the left breaks the posts into four categories: economics, life updates, recommendations, and other. I hope you enjoy!
There was a recent discussion on the IDinsight #philosophy Slack channel about a recent Ezra Klein Show (EKS on this blog from now on, since I talk about it all the time) podcast with Anand Giridharadas. My contribution built off someone else’s notes that Giridharadas is spot on about how companies (also IDinsight in some ways) sell working for them as an extension of the camaraderie and culture of a college campus, how he doesn’t offer concrete solutions and that’s very annoying, and some reflections on transitioning from private sector consulting to IDinsight’s social sector, non-profit consulting model. I related more to the moral arguments in the podcast, and this is what I shared:
I connected most with his argument about how the overall negative impact of many big for-profit companies on worldwide well-being vastly outweighs any individual good you can do with the money you earn. One of EA’s recommended pathways to change is making a ton of money and giving it to effective charities, but if you do that by working for an exploitative company, then you’re really contributing to the maintenance of inequality and of the status quo racist, sexist, oppressive system.
My dad was always talking about having a “noble” profession when I was growing up (he’s a teacher and my mom’s a geriatric physical therapist) and even though “noble” is a strange way to put it, I think it is really important to (as much as possible) only be party to organizations and companies that are doing good or at least not doing active harm.
That being said, there are more reasons for going into the private sector and aiming to make money than are really dealt with in the podcast. For example, a few people we’ve talked to in South Africa have mentioned that many highly skilled South Africans are responsible for the education costs for all siblings/cousins and that is a strong motivator to take a higher paying salary.
It becomes very related to the debate about how much development or social sector workers should get paid, relative to competitive private sector jobs. I think IDinsight does a pretty good job of being in the middle for US associates anyways – paying enough that you can even save some, which is more than a lot of non-profits provide, but not necessarily trying to compete with private sector jobs because our model relies a lot on hiring people who are in it to serve, not for the money. Something for us to continue thinking about is how this might exclude candidates who have other financial responsibilities and how we should respond to this issue in how we hire and set salaries.
It’s so frustrating when people identify a problem without offering solutions. The closest he comes to offering solutions is to have organizations stop lobbying for massive tax breaks or in other ways deprioritize the bottom line of profitability. Sounded to me like his vision involves a lot more socialist ideas: the full solutions to these issues would involve massive-scale reorganizing of the existing economic system… although maybe we are heading in that direction with more co-op style companies and triple bottom line for-profit social enterprises? (Don’t know a ton about this co-op stuff – mostly from another Ezra Klein show episode probably, but it sounds cool!) …Maybe his next book will try to map out solutions, though?
My annotated critique of “The Human Cost of Sweden’s Welfare State” – a poorly argued op-ed in the WSJ by psychoanalyst Erica Komisar.
“Working as a management consultant, Himmelstrand heard from women how sad they were about leaving their one-year-olds in daycare. He began to notice there were no children in the playgrounds during the day. If you walked down the street with a three-year-old toddler, people were amazed and disapproving the child was not in daycare.
He also found educational standards were slipping in Sweden, and rates of psychological distress and psychosomatic illnesses among teens had gone up dramatically, not to mention disruptive behaviour in schools.”
In the past two weeks, I’ve tried to incorporate all my high heels into the line up. It forced me to get a little creative with my outfits, but I think it went well. Please ignore the clothes in the corner…
My favorite podcast right now is the Ezra Klein Show from Vox Media, the news-explaining organization founded by the podcast’s eponymous host. I am also in love with Vox’s Today, Explained and occasionally enjoy The Weeds and Impact.
Just now, I was looking up humanitarian economics and ended up at voxeu.org – a website of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
Vox is also an amplifier manufacturer, a vodka, an anime character, and a TV network in Germany, Quebec, and Norway.
“Why is everything called Vox?” The google search answered my query on the fourth try, with a link to the Wikipedia entry for “vox.” Below the link, in the page preview, it said simply “Vox is Latin for voice.” Well, then.
I love when you think there must be a reason for something and then there is, in fact, a perfectly good explanation.
When I was at Middlebury, I took classes like Famine & Food Security and Economics of Global Health, learning more and more about humanitarian aid and international development. It didn’t really sink in that these were two different sectors until today.
I had a chance to talk to someone who worked for REACH – an organization that tries to collect the most accurate data possible from war zones/humanitarian emergency areas to inform policy. Seem like pretty important work.
Our conversation solidified to me that the humanitarian sector is different from the development sector. The humanitarian sector has a totally different set of actors (dominated by the UN) and missions, although the ultimate mission of a better world is the same.
Development is about the ongoing improvement of individuals living in a comparatively stable system; humanitarian aid is about maintaining human rights and dignities when all those systems break down.
There’s some overlap, of course – regions experiencing ongoing war and violence may be targeted by development and humanitarian programs alike, for example. I also think the vocabulary blurs a bit when discussing funding for development and humanitarian aid.
Development isn’t quite sure how it feels about human rights, though. Rights are good when they lead to economic development, which is equivalent to most development work.
I’d say that my definition of what I want to do in the development sector bleeds over into the human rights and humanitarian arenas. (I’m sure there’s also an important distinction between human rights sector and humanitarian sector – probably that the humanitarian sector is more about meeting people’s basest needs in crisis, although human rights workers also deal with abuses during crises.)
My interest in humanitarian work has been piqued by this conversation today, though. It was also piqued by my former roommate’s description of her work with Doctors without Borders. The idea of going on an intense mission trip for a period of time, being all-in, then taking a break is kind of appealing. Although REACH itself wasn’t described as a great work experience. Really long hours, but fairly repetitive work.
Maybe I should read more about the economics/humanitarian aid/data overlap.
I was reading about the new African journal – Scientific African – that will cater specifically to the needs of African scientists. Awesome!
Among the advantages of the new journal is the fact that “publication in Scientific African will cost $200, around half of what it costs in most recognised journals.”
Wait.
You have to pay to be published in an academic journal? Dang.
I guess that cost is probably built into whatever research grant you’re working on, but in most other publications, I thought writers got paid to contribute content. I guess it’s so that there’s not a direct incentive to publish as much as possible, which could lead to more falsified results? Although it seems like the current model has a lot of messed up incentives, too.
I recently went through a long period of time (about 5/6 weeks) where I wasn’t running and I wasn’t even going to volleyball.
When I miss a planned workout or opportunity to exercise, I get a lot of mixed feelings. I feel good that I’m letting my body rest or, as is often the case, investing time in my personal projects and intellectual growth instead. But I also feel guilty about not exercising, and then guilty for feeling guilty – like I’m doing a bad job being body-positive or self-loving enough.
And then I feel guilty about feeling guilty about feeling guilty because I shouldn’t expect myself to be 100% self-loving all the time. So it’s rare for me to actually feel guiltless about missing exercise – usually, I’m judging myself under the surface and just ignoring those feelings.
I also know that if I miss one opportunity, I’m more likely to skip the next as well. I think that’s in large part because of the guilt cycle I get into. I start to feel defiant, like I shouldn’t even have to “force” myself to exercise if I’m not feeling into it. Because I’ve always been an athlete on sports teams, I’ve rarely had to make the decision to work out myself – it was simply demanded of me by my responsibilities to the team. Now, on my own, I have to actively make the choice to exercise each time and that’s way harder than I expected it to be.
The defiance also comes from the feeling that I don’t want societal pressures to look a certain way, or pressures I’ve put on myself to be seen as an athlete, to control my actions. It’s good to be aware of those pressures, but if I react so strongly in the opposite direction, am I acting any more independently?
Ultimately, I believe it’s good to take breaks and not beat myself up too much about “skipping days.” But it’s also really important to me to exercise. Exercise has a lot of benefits past my physical strength. It makes me happier, more energized.
The first challenge is recognizing when I’m taking a healthy break vs. feeling defiant and making an unhealthy, guilt-driven choice. Although, there might not always be a strict division between those two mentalities.
The second challenge is choosing the best action: do I “force” myself to do some kind of exercise even if I’m not really feeling it, so that I can have more motivation to work out tomorrow? How can I ensure I do workout the day after I take a break?
It’s a lot easier to think through these issues when I have been exercising. When I haven’t, I feel pessimistic about my ability to fix the problems. When I start exercising again, it’s more obvious that I can fix them – hey, I already started working out again, right?
This week, I ran on Sunday and Monday, played volleyball Monday night, and went rock climbing on Tuesday. That feels good, although I’m a bit worried I’ve swung too far in the other direction. Today, I’m planning to just go on a chill, short run when I get home from work or do a yoga session, depending on the rain situation.
I’m proud of myself for ending the exercise drought. And now I’m trying to figure out a strategy for getting back at it earlier in the future.
Also adding videos of the final dances and more pics soon.
Brené Brown quotes this poem by 20th century Spanish poet Antonio Machado in describing her research methodology.
About as long as my pinky
I have blocked out three hours a week for my own PD. What do I want to prioritize? How scheduled/organized should I be about this?
I want to use the time for a mix of projects. This week, I want to read and write about one academic article related to health care and economics. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do. That should take 2 hours – I’ll polish and post my thoughts on my own time. Then, I can use the rest of the time to investigate what kind of mapping questions I can start looking into. I’m very excited about maps.
Long-term, I can plan to split it up into 2-3 chunks so I can make some progress on each of my projects across time.
2 hours: I want to break down what heterodox vs. pluralistic vs. mainstream economics are. The idea of alternative economic models really appeals to me, but I don’t know what the big distinctions or points of conflict are. I’ll find some sources on my own time this week, and on Friday, read them and write up a summary for here.
1 hour: Investigate spatial data available for Kenya, maybe read an article on general spatial data quality in Africa.
With much awkwardness and also appreciation from Vas :)
After an hour of practice – proud of where I got to today!
