It’s good political messaging heading into a midterm where you want emphasize the cronyism and corruption of the party in power. You are obviously overthinking a slogan to the point that nearly all political messages would fall apart under the level of scrutiny.
In Wisconsin, for the last filing period, $6.5 million out of $7.4 million contributed to the Wisconsin Republican Party came from 3 people (two of whom were named Uihlein).
And I just reviewed the transcript one more time--and I don't think Yglesias really understands this issue--but he enjoys saying that the oligarchy doesn't exist. Buying elections isn't the only or primary issue. It is about public policy, winners and losers, public goods, and why we don't have national health care as a human right, ot why we just saw the Voting RIghts Act gutted, or why we have failed to even come close to addressing climate change. Who is winning? Who is best served? How does it happen? I come back to the question: why can't we all (generally speaking) have nice things? I think I know what Bernie "means."
No, they’re not making a libertarian argument. This is an old liberal argument, made by even very left-leaning liberals across the centuries such as John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and Joel Feinberg.
The argument being made is that personal medical attention—regardless of whether or not it is good (and it is almost always good)—is not a right.
Rights are universal, inalienable, and impose duties on other people. Negative rights impose duties of noninterference—e.g. “don’t harm,” “don’t steal,” “don’t punish speech,” etc. A good summary of negative rights might be the old American saying “your right to swing your fist ends where the other fellow’s nose begins.”
The issue with positive rights, such as a right to healthcare, is that they impose absolute and inalienable duties on _everyone_ responsible not just for _not_ taking an action, but for not _achieving_ a certain result.
In addition to being impracticable, this sort of “right” essentially enslaves everybody to the task of achieving the desired results. In practice, rather than admit that positive rights are impossible and undesirable, what happens is that where positive rights are implemented, negative rights become weaker, and the very concept of an inalienable, absolute right is undermined.
For just one example, look at how various kinds of rights to “development” or “economic progress” have been used to undermine indigenous property rights across South America. But hey, at least those people are secure knowing that their governments recognizes their “right to wealth.”
Universal healthcare is a good thing. It is fundamentally decent and civilized for wealthy countries to ensure that all their residents have access to sufficiently high-quality healthcare. It’s not a right.
as someone who is outcome focused the lack of universal healthcare is an abomination that leads to tens of thousands of medical bankruptcies and terrible outcomes for American citizens.
The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany opens with Health Care as among the primary rights of all Germans. The Basic Law was written and adopted in May 8, 1949. The fact that Americans have the right to bear arms at grave cost to our national health is an irony given that we have no right to health care. Such a right does not order any person for labor, but it does lay upon the society and political system the requirement to provide care. The 14th Amendment itself establishes the possibilities that the state is required to provide all manner of services--and in the end was the ground in which Brown v. Board overturned Plessy. v. Ferguson. The debate to me is whether or not health care is a public good, like national defense, clean water, clean air, ot fire departments? With imagination public goods can often be seen as human rights: like nutrition, education, housing etc. Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims health care to be among the universal rights.
And all of these “declarations” are meaningless and foolish—not least the UN’s declaration, which would suggest that the poorest countries in the world are by definition human rights violators by the very fact of their being poor.
You cannot appeal to a philosophical claim about “human rights” with mere legal examples.
Positive rights are an abomination and do not exist. That it is fundamentally decent and civilized to provide healthcare does not make it a human right.
Well--I disagree. After years of seeing this from all sides--I believe the right should exist as a matter of public goods. But that's my point of view.
You pretty clearly don’t understand the side you are arguing against.
Your appeal to “my point of view” is a cheap cop-out when the argument made by others is that your point of view legitimizes slavery and state oppression.
It’s one thing to disagree, entirely another to appeal to your own authority as the basis for disagreement.
Actually you and I will never agree on this point. I prefer a North Star that seeks collective rights and community goods for all--and each of us as best we can. My "mere legal example"s" have translated into real thing-all over the world. And for good or ill, they remain a part of the SDGs-UN Sustainable Development Goals. I prefer to live in a world where we seek to accomplish such abominations.
Rights are not a “North Star.” They are claims to be made against the individuals or entities responsible for violating them. If you are not willing to punish those responsible for violating another’s so-called right, then you do not believe it is a right.
I don’t give a damn about the UN’s “sustainable development goals” and other bureaucratic tripe masquerading as fundamental rights. As I said, such things a healthcare are good. But they are not rights.
You cannot have a right to the labor of other people. That is an illiberal abomination.
I think his point is that simply declaring healthcare to be a human right side-steps the actual challenges of providing it (collecting taxes, authorizing spending, etc.). Germany has done all of those things - that's why they have national healthcare. The declaration that healthcare is a right provides nothing. It simply expresses an aspiration.
Ted--I am sure that is what Mathew meant, and I generally think the issues you raise are fair and relevant, too. By the same token, they are the cost of doing business for a crucial human right. We have tried and failed in the US---as well--to stand up a National Health Care system many times--and failed. The reasons for failure have not been compelling. And the question of whether it is a human right was answered, I think, by the UDHR. So, I believe we can afford a national health system. After all, we can afford Trump? Who benefits from not having universal health care?
His entire argument boiled down to rich people support left candidates too. Which only backs your comment that he completely misunderstood the premise. The question was are we in an oligarchy, not is the oligarchy partisan.
So I have a bit of a different tack about what is going on here, which is that the main reason the “billionaire access” or LEGO CEO example etc bothers people so much is that it forces them to confront their own lack of relative status and power. But the issue is that in any society with any large N of people - capitalist, communist, socialist, whatever - there just always is going to be some comparatively extremely small N-X of people meaningfully influencing the behavior of political leaders. Maybe it’s because of wealth; maybe it’s Politburo membership; maybe it’s because you’re a weird bearded sorcerer-ballerina-priest who miracle-cures the regent’s kids. But the fundamental inequity here is never going away, since the nature of power is that it isn’t equally distributed (else it wouldn’t be power).
I suppose the other thing that would really change if we got most of the money out of politics: the primary job of politicians wouldn't be fundraising.
There's another domain where we can look at what a difference this makes, which is universities. When my parents and grandparents attended the University of California, it had no tuition, not even disguised as "fees". If you got in, you could go. Its primary funding source was the government. The universities didn't need to fundraise, they just needed to manage the budgets given to them by the state. This meant that the UCs were a lot more like European universities- solid academics, but very spartan services- not great cafeteria food and no on-campus gyms, for example.
Now that only 20% of the budget comes from the state, UCs have to focus more on stuff that makes the university look impressive to donors because they're competing against other schools for donor money. That's why you get really fancy buildings, but the students have to pay lab fees for classes they're required to take for their major. Rich donors won't give a lot of money for normal class expenses, they want to get a thing, like a nice auditorium or something else they can get named after them.
This also changes the type of person who can be chancellor. They often have very little in the way of student engagement skills because that's not what matters in the job- it's primarily a fundraising job with some university running on the side. And this is exactly the problem for our politicians: they're primarily fundraisers who happen to do politics. Their primary job isn't representing constituents and drafting legislation. Just as we shouldn't be drowning our scientists in grant application paperwork, we shouldn't be burying our politicians in fundraising calls.
I appreciate that Matt and Jerusalem fetch up proper for these episodes, particularly for one on "is there actually an issue with the oligarchy?"
Excellent episode, as usual. My little hometowns (I live in two places throughout the year) are completely politically captured by the local nutters while the sober and respectful folks are busy working. Boy did I see our situation in this conversation, even though where I live is far from a cosmopolitan place.
This conversation and the Sanders/AOC rhetoric both seem to conflate the terms oligarchy and plutocracy. Oligarchy (rule by an elite clique) describes the Trump administration quite accurately, while the plutocrats (Zuckerberg, Musk etc) are very much on the outside of that clique sitting in the cuck chair and hoping for scraps.
Yes, it showed up yesterday eventually. And I listened to it!
Maybe noteworthy, but I also got it as a new episode again at some point this afternoon…Which is not an issue or anything just letting you know something on your end pushed the episode again.
Political science is on your side on this issue. I summarize that literature in chps 1 and 2 of my 2024 book on energy/climate politics, “Climate of Contempt.”
Absolutely loved this podcast but have a comment/ask for each host based on what they said.
1. Jerusalem says something toward the end about people talking too much about inequality qua inequality and assume that speaks for itself as bad thing. I would LOVE to read/listen to more about this. I have been fascinated/obsessed/annoyed about all the current talk of inequality as if it goes without saying it’s bad. And maybe it is! But that needs to be explained. If everyone is becoming wealthier (which is happening) isn’t that the good thing? And if some people are getting even more wealthier-er…who cares (assuming it isn’t actively limiting everyone else and slowing progress down).
I think about a totally invented either/or:
In Path A, GDP growth goes to zero but the GINI Coefficient of the US reduced 10-fold
In Path B, Everyone in the US suddenly has the living standard of someone making $500k/year BUT the 10 richest people become deca-trillionaires as the same time.
I feel like Path B is so obviously the better world. But it really feels like a lot of people, especially on the left, are suggesting implicitly that path A is better.
2. Matt calls out that the left needs to consider the reality of the Oligopoly before doing things that would be economically very harmful. I agree entirely! But, I feel like the current political conversion could do with a spelling out of what he means. I am not claiming Matt is going to convince the left of anything. But I also feel that ideological space pretty explicitly doesn’t think expropriating billionaires would have economic harms and would be purely positive. Even if (to my first point) all it accomplished was reducing inequality as a measure itself.
Again, I think that’s obviously stupid. But I feel like both sides of this don’t actually spell out the how/why behind their assertion that smashing the oligarchy would be good or bad economically.
I think that Jerusalem is understating the significance of the actual finding in that paper (that I didn't read, myself).
She said:
* It compared the top 10%'s preferences to the middle classes's preference. Middle class is 50%? 80%. Let's say just 50%.
* She said that when the top 10% and the middle class differ, it is coin flip for the outcome.
* She strongly suggested that a coin flip is not a big deal.
However...
* That means that top 10% people each have 500% of the weight of middle class people.
* 500% is a BIG number. We don't say, "One man, one or five votes," or "One man, one-to-five votes." We say "one man, one vote."
* Her description of the finding DEFINITELY shows *wildly* disproportionate voice.
* The fact that we are not talking just about business owners and executives at major employers show that this *IS* real group differences and not specific relevance that can be explained as having a good basis.
I find Matt's rage-baiting arguments to be getting more and more bad-faith as we get closer to mid-terms. He continues to find policy wonk progressives to argue with about leftist topics bc his arguments don't hold water against actual leftist ideologists common talking points.
Time and again Brian Beutler and/or Jerusalem Demsas will site a studies countering Matt, and his response is that the studies are wrong.
In this episode, stating that he thinks his X followers could be taken away for "equality" ... is just ridiculous.
The topic (is oligarchy whatever) is so filled with hot-air that it's almost doesn't get discussed. Which works in Matt's favor, because he literally thinks
The Ultra-wealthy don't control politics,
Ivy-education doesn't make you better off than community college,
Anti-Genocide is equal to Pro-Hamas
The bad-faith-ness is creeping into Jesse Waters territory.
Brad DeLong was part of the non-personal threat part of the pile on, saying Henderson had too many luxury goods. The coda about him quitting blogging, and the editorializing that this was a shame, reminded me of what life was like online before Cancel Culture was in full swing, and people hadn’t internalized the idea that, to quote Ari Fleischer “[we] need to watch what [we] say, watch what [we] do”
The question Matt had of "what to do about some people having more influence" made me think of the Ezra Klein show's episode on random sampling democracy with Helene Landemore. People don't like to show up for jury duty, but they do, and they generally take their roles seriously once selected even though most would never have volunteered for it. I wonder if that's a model we could use for other purposes.
I do also think Matt has a point that while money in politics causes problems, dealing with it wouldn't necessarily fix all the problems. But it would fix some- the main one I can think of is California ballot initiative campaigns would be quite different if advertisements for or against them were much more limited.
It’s good political messaging heading into a midterm where you want emphasize the cronyism and corruption of the party in power. You are obviously overthinking a slogan to the point that nearly all political messages would fall apart under the level of scrutiny.
In Wisconsin, for the last filing period, $6.5 million out of $7.4 million contributed to the Wisconsin Republican Party came from 3 people (two of whom were named Uihlein).
And I just reviewed the transcript one more time--and I don't think Yglesias really understands this issue--but he enjoys saying that the oligarchy doesn't exist. Buying elections isn't the only or primary issue. It is about public policy, winners and losers, public goods, and why we don't have national health care as a human right, ot why we just saw the Voting RIghts Act gutted, or why we have failed to even come close to addressing climate change. Who is winning? Who is best served? How does it happen? I come back to the question: why can't we all (generally speaking) have nice things? I think I know what Bernie "means."
"why we don't have national health care as a human right"
because you can't have a right to someone else's labor
you're making the same argument rand Paul made. youre implying that every country with nationalized medicine does slavery to their doctors?
No, they’re not making a libertarian argument. This is an old liberal argument, made by even very left-leaning liberals across the centuries such as John Stuart Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and Joel Feinberg.
The argument being made is that personal medical attention—regardless of whether or not it is good (and it is almost always good)—is not a right.
Rights are universal, inalienable, and impose duties on other people. Negative rights impose duties of noninterference—e.g. “don’t harm,” “don’t steal,” “don’t punish speech,” etc. A good summary of negative rights might be the old American saying “your right to swing your fist ends where the other fellow’s nose begins.”
The issue with positive rights, such as a right to healthcare, is that they impose absolute and inalienable duties on _everyone_ responsible not just for _not_ taking an action, but for not _achieving_ a certain result.
In addition to being impracticable, this sort of “right” essentially enslaves everybody to the task of achieving the desired results. In practice, rather than admit that positive rights are impossible and undesirable, what happens is that where positive rights are implemented, negative rights become weaker, and the very concept of an inalienable, absolute right is undermined.
For just one example, look at how various kinds of rights to “development” or “economic progress” have been used to undermine indigenous property rights across South America. But hey, at least those people are secure knowing that their governments recognizes their “right to wealth.”
Universal healthcare is a good thing. It is fundamentally decent and civilized for wealthy countries to ensure that all their residents have access to sufficiently high-quality healthcare. It’s not a right.
I mean I don't think philosophers making an argument makes it correct.
https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/health-policy-101-international-comparison-of-health-systems/?entry=table-of-contents-introduction
I'm a data and outcome based person and the US model costs more and delivers terrible outcomes.
you're so convinced that positive rights are an abomination but many countries around the world have a right to health and/or public health.
https://www.worldpolicycenter.org/constitutional-approaches-to-the-right-to-health
as someone who is outcome focused the lack of universal healthcare is an abomination that leads to tens of thousands of medical bankruptcies and terrible outcomes for American citizens.
Many other countries have some type of national health care program
But in practice, they still don't have a right to health c
are
Look at waiting list over in the UK.
Or all the different things that aren't covered
That's not how actual rights work
With an actual right, you can go to court and you can say, hey, this person is infringing on my right, and get a court order to stop it
Nobody here is currently arguing for the US model. You’re insisting on a straw man.
It is quite easy to believe universal healthcare—as a result of any model—is good without believing it is a right.
The Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany opens with Health Care as among the primary rights of all Germans. The Basic Law was written and adopted in May 8, 1949. The fact that Americans have the right to bear arms at grave cost to our national health is an irony given that we have no right to health care. Such a right does not order any person for labor, but it does lay upon the society and political system the requirement to provide care. The 14th Amendment itself establishes the possibilities that the state is required to provide all manner of services--and in the end was the ground in which Brown v. Board overturned Plessy. v. Ferguson. The debate to me is whether or not health care is a public good, like national defense, clean water, clean air, ot fire departments? With imagination public goods can often be seen as human rights: like nutrition, education, housing etc. Article 25 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims health care to be among the universal rights.
And all of these “declarations” are meaningless and foolish—not least the UN’s declaration, which would suggest that the poorest countries in the world are by definition human rights violators by the very fact of their being poor.
You cannot appeal to a philosophical claim about “human rights” with mere legal examples.
Positive rights are an abomination and do not exist. That it is fundamentally decent and civilized to provide healthcare does not make it a human right.
exactly right
None of that means we can't or shouldn't have a safety net. But there is no right to anything
Well--I disagree. After years of seeing this from all sides--I believe the right should exist as a matter of public goods. But that's my point of view.
> After years of seeing this from all sides
You pretty clearly don’t understand the side you are arguing against.
Your appeal to “my point of view” is a cheap cop-out when the argument made by others is that your point of view legitimizes slavery and state oppression.
It’s one thing to disagree, entirely another to appeal to your own authority as the basis for disagreement.
Actually you and I will never agree on this point. I prefer a North Star that seeks collective rights and community goods for all--and each of us as best we can. My "mere legal example"s" have translated into real thing-all over the world. And for good or ill, they remain a part of the SDGs-UN Sustainable Development Goals. I prefer to live in a world where we seek to accomplish such abominations.
Rights are not a “North Star.” They are claims to be made against the individuals or entities responsible for violating them. If you are not willing to punish those responsible for violating another’s so-called right, then you do not believe it is a right.
I don’t give a damn about the UN’s “sustainable development goals” and other bureaucratic tripe masquerading as fundamental rights. As I said, such things a healthcare are good. But they are not rights.
You cannot have a right to the labor of other people. That is an illiberal abomination.
Goodnight Clever Beast. What I am saying is not so much that we disagree--but that you are wrong. I hope yours day ahead go well.
I think his point is that simply declaring healthcare to be a human right side-steps the actual challenges of providing it (collecting taxes, authorizing spending, etc.). Germany has done all of those things - that's why they have national healthcare. The declaration that healthcare is a right provides nothing. It simply expresses an aspiration.
Ted--I am sure that is what Mathew meant, and I generally think the issues you raise are fair and relevant, too. By the same token, they are the cost of doing business for a crucial human right. We have tried and failed in the US---as well--to stand up a National Health Care system many times--and failed. The reasons for failure have not been compelling. And the question of whether it is a human right was answered, I think, by the UDHR. So, I believe we can afford a national health system. After all, we can afford Trump? Who benefits from not having universal health care?
His entire argument boiled down to rich people support left candidates too. Which only backs your comment that he completely misunderstood the premise. The question was are we in an oligarchy, not is the oligarchy partisan.
So I have a bit of a different tack about what is going on here, which is that the main reason the “billionaire access” or LEGO CEO example etc bothers people so much is that it forces them to confront their own lack of relative status and power. But the issue is that in any society with any large N of people - capitalist, communist, socialist, whatever - there just always is going to be some comparatively extremely small N-X of people meaningfully influencing the behavior of political leaders. Maybe it’s because of wealth; maybe it’s Politburo membership; maybe it’s because you’re a weird bearded sorcerer-ballerina-priest who miracle-cures the regent’s kids. But the fundamental inequity here is never going away, since the nature of power is that it isn’t equally distributed (else it wouldn’t be power).
I suppose the other thing that would really change if we got most of the money out of politics: the primary job of politicians wouldn't be fundraising.
There's another domain where we can look at what a difference this makes, which is universities. When my parents and grandparents attended the University of California, it had no tuition, not even disguised as "fees". If you got in, you could go. Its primary funding source was the government. The universities didn't need to fundraise, they just needed to manage the budgets given to them by the state. This meant that the UCs were a lot more like European universities- solid academics, but very spartan services- not great cafeteria food and no on-campus gyms, for example.
Now that only 20% of the budget comes from the state, UCs have to focus more on stuff that makes the university look impressive to donors because they're competing against other schools for donor money. That's why you get really fancy buildings, but the students have to pay lab fees for classes they're required to take for their major. Rich donors won't give a lot of money for normal class expenses, they want to get a thing, like a nice auditorium or something else they can get named after them.
This also changes the type of person who can be chancellor. They often have very little in the way of student engagement skills because that's not what matters in the job- it's primarily a fundraising job with some university running on the side. And this is exactly the problem for our politicians: they're primarily fundraisers who happen to do politics. Their primary job isn't representing constituents and drafting legislation. Just as we shouldn't be drowning our scientists in grant application paperwork, we shouldn't be burying our politicians in fundraising calls.
I appreciate that Matt and Jerusalem fetch up proper for these episodes, particularly for one on "is there actually an issue with the oligarchy?"
Excellent episode, as usual. My little hometowns (I live in two places throughout the year) are completely politically captured by the local nutters while the sober and respectful folks are busy working. Boy did I see our situation in this conversation, even though where I live is far from a cosmopolitan place.
This conversation and the Sanders/AOC rhetoric both seem to conflate the terms oligarchy and plutocracy. Oligarchy (rule by an elite clique) describes the Trump administration quite accurately, while the plutocrats (Zuckerberg, Musk etc) are very much on the outside of that clique sitting in the cuck chair and hoping for scraps.
So, for some reason this episode isn’t coming to the podcast feed in my podcast app (Pocketcasts if it matters) like all the previous ones have…
Hi, we are experiencing some technical issues and are working on getting the episode distributed to podcast feeds ASAP.
The episode is now up on all platforms!
Hi, are you able to listen to, and download, the episode on Pocketcasts?
Yes, it showed up yesterday eventually. And I listened to it!
Maybe noteworthy, but I also got it as a new episode again at some point this afternoon…Which is not an issue or anything just letting you know something on your end pushed the episode again.
Same problem. Overcast, for me.
The episode is now up on all platforms!
Hi, I wrote this above, but we are experiencing some technical issues and are working on getting the episode distributed to podcast feeds ASAP.
Yup, I use PocketCasts and it’s not there.
Same. I can't find any version of it anywhere that's just audio
Apologies for the inconvenience. The episode is now up on all platforms!
Political science is on your side on this issue. I summarize that literature in chps 1 and 2 of my 2024 book on energy/climate politics, “Climate of Contempt.”
Absolutely loved this podcast but have a comment/ask for each host based on what they said.
1. Jerusalem says something toward the end about people talking too much about inequality qua inequality and assume that speaks for itself as bad thing. I would LOVE to read/listen to more about this. I have been fascinated/obsessed/annoyed about all the current talk of inequality as if it goes without saying it’s bad. And maybe it is! But that needs to be explained. If everyone is becoming wealthier (which is happening) isn’t that the good thing? And if some people are getting even more wealthier-er…who cares (assuming it isn’t actively limiting everyone else and slowing progress down).
I think about a totally invented either/or:
In Path A, GDP growth goes to zero but the GINI Coefficient of the US reduced 10-fold
In Path B, Everyone in the US suddenly has the living standard of someone making $500k/year BUT the 10 richest people become deca-trillionaires as the same time.
I feel like Path B is so obviously the better world. But it really feels like a lot of people, especially on the left, are suggesting implicitly that path A is better.
2. Matt calls out that the left needs to consider the reality of the Oligopoly before doing things that would be economically very harmful. I agree entirely! But, I feel like the current political conversion could do with a spelling out of what he means. I am not claiming Matt is going to convince the left of anything. But I also feel that ideological space pretty explicitly doesn’t think expropriating billionaires would have economic harms and would be purely positive. Even if (to my first point) all it accomplished was reducing inequality as a measure itself.
Again, I think that’s obviously stupid. But I feel like both sides of this don’t actually spell out the how/why behind their assertion that smashing the oligarchy would be good or bad economically.
I think that Jerusalem is understating the significance of the actual finding in that paper (that I didn't read, myself).
She said:
* It compared the top 10%'s preferences to the middle classes's preference. Middle class is 50%? 80%. Let's say just 50%.
* She said that when the top 10% and the middle class differ, it is coin flip for the outcome.
* She strongly suggested that a coin flip is not a big deal.
However...
* That means that top 10% people each have 500% of the weight of middle class people.
* 500% is a BIG number. We don't say, "One man, one or five votes," or "One man, one-to-five votes." We say "one man, one vote."
* Her description of the finding DEFINITELY shows *wildly* disproportionate voice.
* The fact that we are not talking just about business owners and executives at major employers show that this *IS* real group differences and not specific relevance that can be explained as having a good basis.
To be sure...
* No, this is not an oligarchy finding.
Jesus christ.
"Cui bono?", you two.
I find Matt's rage-baiting arguments to be getting more and more bad-faith as we get closer to mid-terms. He continues to find policy wonk progressives to argue with about leftist topics bc his arguments don't hold water against actual leftist ideologists common talking points.
Time and again Brian Beutler and/or Jerusalem Demsas will site a studies countering Matt, and his response is that the studies are wrong.
In this episode, stating that he thinks his X followers could be taken away for "equality" ... is just ridiculous.
The topic (is oligarchy whatever) is so filled with hot-air that it's almost doesn't get discussed. Which works in Matt's favor, because he literally thinks
The Ultra-wealthy don't control politics,
Ivy-education doesn't make you better off than community college,
Anti-Genocide is equal to Pro-Hamas
The bad-faith-ness is creeping into Jesse Waters territory.
some people losing elections doesn't mean the oligarchy doesn't exist lol.
https://www.businessinsider.com/which-billionaires-support-donald-trump-campaign take a gander and like the trump administration has like 12 or so billionaires directly shaping policy and is the richest administration in history.
this is such an embarrassing podcast and you all define and abstract away so much.
Matt’s discussion of the levels of who “the oligarchy” is reminded me of the Todd Henderson affair in 2010, when his $250k salary meant he was considered “Super Rich” and in the crosshairs of a tax hike: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2010/09/21/super-rich-law-professor-retires-from-blogging-after-electronic-lynch-mob-attacks-his-position-on-taxes/
Brad DeLong was part of the non-personal threat part of the pile on, saying Henderson had too many luxury goods. The coda about him quitting blogging, and the editorializing that this was a shame, reminded me of what life was like online before Cancel Culture was in full swing, and people hadn’t internalized the idea that, to quote Ari Fleischer “[we] need to watch what [we] say, watch what [we] do”
The question Matt had of "what to do about some people having more influence" made me think of the Ezra Klein show's episode on random sampling democracy with Helene Landemore. People don't like to show up for jury duty, but they do, and they generally take their roles seriously once selected even though most would never have volunteered for it. I wonder if that's a model we could use for other purposes.
I do also think Matt has a point that while money in politics causes problems, dealing with it wouldn't necessarily fix all the problems. But it would fix some- the main one I can think of is California ballot initiative campaigns would be quite different if advertisements for or against them were much more limited.