[new draft post] State capacity and authoritarianism https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/15/state-capacity-and-authoritarianism/index.html
@realcaseyrollins I guess I'd just ask you to think about how we get all these policies gigafirms can milk. There's a lot of lobbying, and more pervasively but less overtly a whole infrastructure of "philanthropically" funded "education and research", that advocates "pro further enrichment of incumbent businesses and the billionaires who own them" as if it were the same thing as competitive capitalism. 1/
EDIT: added the scare quote "education and research" deserve
@realcaseyrollins I favor competitive capitalism. But incumbent winners — currently dominant firm, the richest existing people — hate it. They pretend to love it, of course, because it is the basis for the legitimacy of their wealth. But if you're already at the tippy-top, that "dynamism" we all extol has only one direction for you, regression to the mean. It is in your interest to consolidate advantage, not level the playing field. 2/
@realcaseyrollins It really isn't about envy! If it were about that, well someone with $50M lives a life of unimaginable freedom and luxury as much as someone with $50B. It's not reductive because it's reasoned. It's not the existence of fat and happy people that's the problem. It's the things last-years winners do to ensure that they keep winning and stay on top. At some magnitudes, they can't do very much. But in the billions, 10s, 100s, of billions? Yes they can. /fin
people ask “why is the world silent?”
i quietly wonder, who imagined the world could speak?
Q: What does George W. Bush say at the sweaty end of a session of lovemaking?
A: Emission accomplished.
@realcaseyrollins you have to fight it from both sides. the humans are clever. if you don't put limits on the scale of their competition, they will push it always harder, and not confine themselves to constructive dimensions of competition. antitrust will always be whackamole while table stakes in a certain club are billions. you need antitrust. you also need to limit the prizes that incentivize dickish business practices. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5031.html
@realcaseyrollins i have no problem with millionaires. even several tens of millionaires. sure, people should strive to become rich. they should not imagine they can become caesar, and should not have resources sufficient to overwhelm our politics.
@realcaseyrollins every billionaire is a policy failure, yes. rich is 10s of millions. much more than i'll ever have anything like and that's great. not enough to finance shadow governments as philanthropy, lobbying, and "business".
@realcaseyrollins nope. it’s protecting any semblance of democracy.
but you be you!
sometimes you miss gender people when you mister gender them.
@realcaseyrollins richer than us is fine. rich enough to live lives entirely apart and own mass media is not.
maybe musk wouldn't pay himself so much if he faced a 94% marginal tax rate.
just spitballin' here!
tbh there'd be a lot fewer hallucinations than if he wrote it himself. https://jabberwocking.com/trump-says-ai-wrote-one-of-his-speeches/
Re this bump-stock decision, I can't help but ask, are the conservatives on the Supreme Court accelerationists?
is the word "respectfully" ever used more ironically than at the Supreme Court?
a response that flatters your priors is called a "debunking".
“Expect Recall to be baked into Enterprise versions of Windows, and your boss spying on your in an incredibly intrusive way soon enough.” #quoderat http://www.technologyasnature.com/recalled/
@lordbowlich @SteveRoth housing wealth appreciation, which is housing cost appreciation, is indeed a burden for us all!
but you are better off with an asset that has tracked housing price rises than those of us who have no such asset.
(that’s not any kind of criticism! i’m glad you have some insurance against housing price spikes.)
@Alon @SteveRoth i don’t think you are right. lower quartile labor income did well, increasing faster in % terms than higher quantiles (though not necessarily in dollar terms).
but those numbers far from >> comprehensive income in higher quartiles, including capital income and valuation changes (the latter i think is what you mean by wealth).
in any case, @SteveRoth has the best numbers on these questions.
“the much-heralded and certainly welcome bottom-50% en-wealthification was miniscule in both absolute and relative terms. And it was heavily skewed toward the (wealthier) homeowners in that group.” @SteveRoth https://wealtheconomics.substack.com/p/another-look-at-the-bottom-50-wealth
[new draft post] Yimboree https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/13/yimboree/index.html