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The author argues that Matt Yglesias's story of Clinton's fiscal discipline producing the 1990s boom flattens a messy history. Drawing on Clinton-era economists' own reports, he says tech, the Cold War peace dividend, and luck mattered at least as much as deficit cuts.
- Clinton did not freely choose deficit reduction; he reluctantly gave up his investment agenda after internal fights and pressure from bond markets and the Fed.
- The Clinton administration's 2001 Economic Report credits technology, business reorganization, and policy together, with growth itself helping shrink the deficit.
- Oliner and Sichel estimated IT drove roughly two-thirds of the late-1990s productivity acceleration, and defense spending fell about 30 percent in real terms between 1988 and 1997.
- Blinder and Yellen, both Clinton economists, credit fiscal policy but repeatedly fall back on supply shocks, stock market gains, and a cooperative Fed.
Daron Acemoglu argues that AI is too important to be left to experts and technocrats alone—democratic institutions must shape its direction. He pushes back on four common arguments for technocratic control, then raises the harder problem: how do you include the voices of billions of people outside the US, Europe, and China in AI decisions that will affect everyone.
- The contradiction is stark: if AI will transform every aspect of society, claiming it's too complex for democratic input doesn't hold. Citizens don't need to code; they need enough information to decide what kind of future they want and how to weigh tradeoffs.
- Competition between AI labs and countries isn't a reliable safeguard—it often brings out the worst in organizations. Relying on the ethical judgment of unconstrained leaders is historically a bad bet.
- Democratic involvement might actually reduce polarization and strengthen trust in institutions, while delegating decisions to technocrats without public input could worsen both.
- The global dimension is unresolved: even if democracies like the US and Europe figure out how to govern AI, the technology will shape the lives of 6 billion people who have no seat at the table.