Coffee blends

We know that many of the geniuses of fin de siècle Vienna met in the café’s of that city’s first district to produce great conversation and ideas. The magic of those times and places is impossible replicate but many have tried to approximate the idea. Starbucks (and competitors) filled a void in many cities here and abroad. Yes, they’re even in Vienna. 

But there is simply no way to mass market and mass replicate the legendary café’s that Shachar Pinsker writes about in A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture. Pinsker focus is Jewish culture but we know that conviviality and conversation are a universal human desire. The fact that great ideas and great art come about this way is a wonderful bonus and, under the right circumstances, to be expected. We think best when we interact and network.

Pinsker ends his tour of the erstwhile landmark coffee houses of Odessa, Warsaw, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Tel Aviv with a lament about where we are now. “It is hard to think of significant poetic or intellectual groups meeting in cafes on a regular basis …” (p. 303). Where these occur it is serendipitous and unlikely to be packaged in the Starbucks formula. But that would be asking a lot.

This is the age of screens and screen time. People like to interact face-to-face and they also like their screen time.  They understand that we benefit from many types of interactions, personal, electronic, near and far. All have their place. We get too pick the blend that works for us.

Elites

Climate change, to the extent that it is human-caused is a global commons. The Prisoners' Dilemma indicates the futility of individual action.  The chart below (from The Economist) shows that in recent years, the U.S. has been an over-achiever reducing carbon emissions. China and India are under-achievers.

Why, then, the California Bullet Train?  Perhaps it will never get built. If it does, it will have huge costs and offer negligible benefits. If it does not, huge sums will have been wasted. The State's public pension commitments are underfunded. The roads are potted. Public spaces are the domain of the homeless.

You do not have to visit the U.K, France, Greece, etc. to see the consequences government by out-of-touch elites. But do read about the  clueless here, there, and everywhere in Martin Gurri's The Revolt of the Public.  Elites are may still think Bootleggers and Baptists but in the age of the internet, locking in legacies the old-fashioned way may not work. When elites get clobbered, they apparently revert to Manchurian-candidate-from-Russia fantasies. Any self-awareness is missing.