Timing is Everything

Peter Suderman, Reason magazine’s features editor and cocktail connoisseur, makes his first appearance on The Remnant today to preach ...

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Peter Suderman, Reason magazine’s features editor and cocktail connoisseur, makes his first appearance on The Remnant today to preach the gospel of Kanye West. He also gives his thoughts on the Afghanistan withdrawal, the potential of Bitcoin to replace currency as we know it, and the government’s propensity to, as Jonah puts it, “spend like a pimp with a week to live.” Is it finally time to buy gold? Does anyone still believe that Spider-Man: No Way Home won’t be a crossover movie? And will Jonah’s rendition of “Rapper’s Delight” become the new Remnant theme song?

Show Notes:

–Peter’s author page at Reason

–Cocktails with Suderman

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  1. Avatar photo
    Jim McC

    This was a great podcast, and I think that one of the notes I've read a few times- that is was uncomfortable to listen to- stems a bit from what I perceive to be Jonah's discomfort, at times, with disagreement with his guests. He got much more into it with Suderman (politely, but with both sides taking clear, and opposed, positions. I think some of the discomfort came from saying, multiple times, that they wanted to get off Afghanistan, while no really being able to let it drop, and I think it would be healthier to embrace the debate more. I'd like to see more of that civil back-and-forth, whether with ideological allies or folks like Mo Elleithee or - especially- someone like A.B. Stoddard, whom Jonah really strives not to challenge even when she herself is getting a bit worked up over, say, southern governors. I greatly enjoy respectful debate, and would like to see more of it.

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    Charlie M.

    Great podcast. Re BTC I’d consider having Balaji Srinivasan on.

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    Bjmckenz

    The question of nations and time has a dimension that wasn't brought up. I submit that's all nations have a cadence that is related to government. For example, we have a 4/8 cadence. We usually change (lose) our minds every 4 years and definitely every 8 (two presidential terms). As we know, foreign policy can swing wildly on that cadence. It's an unusual situation when an active conflict can last more than a few beats. Obama and Trump did not end Afghanistan, they just choked it out.

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    Ben Connelly

    Overall good podcast but you missed the one Kanye question we needed Peter to answer: did he vote for Kanye in 2020?

    I confess, I got a little angry with his arguments about Afghanistan. This is why I’m not a Libertarian (even if I may have voted that way in the past). At first, he made a pretty reasonable case. Jonah, I think you absolutely called it on the metaphysics of his time argument. When he mentioned forever wars and imperialism and making Afghanistan a protectorate he completely lost me. If we pulled our 30000 troops out of South Korea and made it clear to the world that we would not defend the South Korean people, North Korea (with their quite large army) would come roaring in and would do to South Korea what the Taliban did to the Afghan government. If we straight up said we would not come to South Korea’s aid, Kim wouldn’t even need to ask the Chinese for help to steamroll the whole peninsula. Not saying that South Korea does not have brave citizens - I’ve met at least one. But they don’t have the military might of North Korea. Now, does this mean that the Korean War is a forever war? Or that South Korea is an American colony or protectorate? Obviously not. You could ask anyone in South Korea. It is a sovereign nation.

    At least Peter made the national honor - honor culture connection. But if he’s making ephemeral arguments about nations’ time, he can’t dismiss national honor as ephemeral. If anything, in the world of IR, national honor is one of the only things that matter. It’s not some high-minded concept about integrity. It means reputation.

    For all those who still sneer at national honor, let’s look at the business world. If you were a businessman, you could look down on those who say reputation is what matters in business. But if your business developed a reputation for producing crappy products that didn’t work, people would stop buying from you and you would go out of business. In the world of school bullying, if you developed a reputation for giving bullies a hard fight, they would leave you alone. If you developed a reputation for giving them your lunch money, you’d keep getting beat up.

    So it is with international politics. If America develops a reputation for backing down, or for going in and messing up a country and not fixing the mess, or for whatever you want to construe Afghanistan to mean, we will get attacked more. We will lose allies. We will face serious material threats. If we get a reputation for not honoring our promises, nobody will work with us. Finishing what we started in Afghanistan is not about being the world’s policeman. It’s not the same as starting a new conflict. Once we were there, it was our responsibility to stay until the job was done, however long that took. Not “forever.” But as long as it took. Which by definition would not have been forever.

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    Sean

    Good podcast Jonah, though different than how your conversations usually go. Instead of spending time in nuance or in mostlly-agreeing territory, sometimes you and Peter disagreed, and sometimes you just didn't have an opinion (though you still asked good questions).
    With Afghanistan, your conversation demonstrated for me how important it is to *ask the right question(s)* when it comes to the decision whether or not to leave. I think there are still some to be asked and talked through with smart guests. For example, I know having a base near China & Russia could be useful, but will it actually be? And at what cost? Goodwill is full of stuff that people once thought "could be useful" but turned out not to be. And at the same time we spend plenty of money on things like insurance that "could be useful" and that we hope never to need. Is Bagram like Insurance? Anyway, that's off-topic.
    I don't think you should be afraid of as much disagreement in the future with your guests, because it can be a fruitful conversation. I'm reminded of the episode of Ezra Klein show where David when on to discuss their two books about polarization. It was tense, and there was significant disagreement, but it was still a good podcast. And we all need better examples in our lives of what it looks like to amicably disagree.

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    Mulecanter

    Holy Cow Jonah, that was an awful podcast. Not you, your guest Peter Suderman. I've been listening to you for years and years and this was the worst guest you have ever had. Suderman seems like someone you see on Twitter or in a college dorm bull session. His discussion about Afghanistan and the absurd point about time he attempted was idiotic. Your push back was spot on and overly polite. His bitcoin discussion was superficial and cliche. I hope you refrain from further discussions with young Peter on the Remnant, he is not ready for prime time.

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      Angie

      How young is he? His wife, Megan McArdle, while not old, doesn't seem young to me?

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    Will Wright

    FYI, everyone hated Zach Braff in the mid-2000s because he won an Oscar in 2005 for the Garden State soundtrack, which was just a half-decent indie playlist. This was way back when the Academy Awards still had significant cultural importance.

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    Octávio Lima

    I like libertarians. There is much to agree with them. But I am always surprised they do not see the need for foreign policy, particularly a robust foreign policy, to maintain and keep the individualism they so much promote. But it was a great podcast.

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      Paul Hoppenjans

      This is exactly as I see it. I often find myself nodding when libertarians speak about government overreach and personal liberty, but then you get to foreign policy and national security matters and it flips over to discordant, nails-on-chalkboard painful nonsense.

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  9. DJ

    Just listened to the Bitcoin part. I agree with Peter's point about the underlying technology being more important than Bitcoin. I personally think Bitcoin is waaaay overvalued and may eventually go to zero. It's got first-mover advantage, but doesn't have any real utility. It's the MySpace of cryptocurrency.

    I'm very bullish on Ethereum. Not as a currency, but as a way to ensure identity and trust in disparate systems. That sounds very abstract because it is, but it's kind of like how TCP/IP made the Internet possible, or how Linux and other open-source Unixes are the hosts for applications.

    The average person interacts with Linux everywhere but they don't realize it because it's all in the cloud. Ethereum will play a similar role by allowing resources to compensate each other for use without human intervention. There will be human-facing interfaces using different brand names "powered by Ethereum" or something like that.

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    Dave

    Also, has there ever been a better advocacy of cocktails than the one that Suderman put forth? I think not.

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