All articles from Brad DeLong
Notes on Google's Attempt at Self-Disruption
Can Google sustain itself this way, as it makes a very high stakes bet on transforming itself from gateway to gatekeeper?...ShareShare Brad DeLong's Grasping RealityThis is, at some level, gonzo:Rich Holmes: Google is destroying its own business - and still winning <https://departmentofproduct.subst
NOTE TO SELF: On Katie Martin's "Magnificent Seven" Today
Engines of growth reshaping the world, but then increasingly becoming rent collectors. The fortunes of the "Magnificent Seven". What happens in the New Reality of Big Tech? And what are the answers to the natural questions about competition, equity, and the future of innovation?... ShareShare Brad D
The Engineer-Dictator Temptation: Lawrence Dennis, the Great Depression, & the Fascist Road Not Taken
Could the United States had followed Germany and France down the path to fascism in the 1930s? Consider the dark logic of Lawrence Dennis, the failures of liberal reform, and the contingent heroism that kept America on a different course. The 1930s were a hinge in world history, and Lawrence Dennis
For the Next Month: Going All-in on The Browser Company's Dia-AI
& we will see where we get, and whether we need... ROADS! From searchbox to sidekick: is the humble web browser the secret to mastering the potential of MAMLMs as natural-language interfaces and as superbig-data, superhigh-dimension, superflexible-function classifiers, rather than being mastered by
Notes on SubStack These Days
The Substack Paradox: community, control, the myth of lock-in, golden handcuffs, platform power, writer agency, exit, & voice...ShareShare Brad DeLong's Grasping RealityShare Brad DeLong's Grasping RealityI went to the SubStack Party at Shotwell's Saloon <https://www.shotwellsbar.com/> in San Franci
Apple Computer's Different-Drummer "AI" Path Considered
The way, financially, for a company to win the ChatBot game in a profitability sense is—probably—not to play. Cupertino's AI contrarianism of betting on the device, not the cloud; and on the routinized use-case, not the wide-open ChatBot, is—probably—not just defensible as a bet, but a bet at favora
Yes, Kevin Hassett Would Be a Very Bed Fed Chair
Lying liars who lie and knowingly and deliberately say whatever—whatever—lies they believe are to their immediate advantage are not the kind of people who should chair the Federal Reserve. Any questions?ShareTime to fire up the WayBack machine and run the videotape. Why economists shake their heads
Macroeconomy Now Below "Stall Speed"?
Job creation slows, dementia-addled chaos-monkey tariff risks continue, data-center construction booms with little ability to rapidly move resources into that part of the construction-investment sector, and so the likelihood of stagflation in the near-term future rises. The U.S. economy is growing,
Our Chaos-Monkey, Dementia-Suffering, Cognitively-Addled President, & the Bureau of Labor Statistics
The day the economic-statistics numbers died: dementia-addled chaos-monkey Trump's assault on statistical independence. A political purge of America's economic thermometer is not good. Especially since Republican senators have decided to use Trump's outburst to call for "BLS reform". & so we watch t
BOOK PROJECT: History of Economic Thought
One project I might spend a solid month on this fall is to try turn my history of economic thought lecture notes into a ms. for a relevant "history of economic thought" book—that is, a book that starts with (a) the need, if we are to be prosperous, to both have and coördinate a societal division of
A Note on the Closing of the Path to Future U.S. Hegemony—Economic, Political, Geostrategic, Cultural
From hegemon to has-been, remarkably quickly too. But think, post American hegemony, not Chinese hegemony but rather (hopefully peaceful) balance-of-power, and of influence, global politics. Trump's chaos-monkey nature, internal dysfunction, and strategic myopia have indeed opened the door. When the
MILKEN INSTITUTE REVIEW: Behind the Hype: What "AI" Is & Isn't
In the summer 2025 issue of the Milken Institute Review. Silicon dreams & nightmares & the real sakes of the AI frenzy comprised of machine minds, human motives, & a lot of tangled hype...ShareDeLong, J. Bradford. 2025. "Behind the Hype: What 'AI' Is & Isn't". Milken Institute Review. 58 (Summer). <
Losing Friends, Hobbling Manufacturing Businesses & Workers, & Sabotaging Growth with One Inept Chaos-Monkey Tariff Trick
A masterclass in self-destruction as Bessent, Lutnick, Greer, Hassett, Vought, Miran, Navarro, Miller, and all the other grifters try to retcon the chaos-monkey social-media posts of Trump into a policy, pushing up inflation, fueling corrupt cronyism, & causing America's decline in both prosperity a