1. I'll explain what I mean here. I'm a Biden voter. But it is fundamentally dangerous that Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai are making policy over how we deliberate over political matters. This policy has to be done through the government. But the problem is even deeper.
2. Voting machines are now consolidated and owned by private equity firms, who make policy over electoral infrastructure itself. Media conglomerates organize the political parties. Contractors structure government spending and Blackrock structures Federal Reserve policy.
3. The essence of democracy is twofold, civic and commercial. We need competitive markets and a democratic system of industrial control. Otherwise monopolists will and do make public policy that we the people would otherwise be making.
4. For decades, we have delegated the commercial sphere to economists and experts, while focusing entirely on civic questions. But commerce is where a lot of policy happens. Facebook, Google, and Amazon present this in an extraordinarily stark manner.
5. America, unlike European countries, split its financial center (NYC) from its political center (DC). That was a way to ward off concentrations of power. But now the richest man in America owns the newspaper in the nation's capital, and will have 50,000 employees here.
6. Today there are a lot of debates over the nature of American history. Was it founded in 1619 or 1776 or 1787 or 1865? What is the root of our modern social problems?

There's a third strand of our historical narrative, which is the traditional democratic commercial system.
7. And this one is quite jarring, and breaks most comfortable narratives. Because the mass de-industrialization of America, which took place in the 1980s to 2000s, is the main story here. There are no precedents for it. It is new. The villains are Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
8. It is about the transfer of public power to private oligarchs, but it is also about explicitly getting rid of productive capacity and placing ourselves as the mercy of foreigners. This has never happened before. Ever. It is truly reckless.
9. When Trump talked about Make America Great Again, he was mocked, and rightly so. But he was also understood, because America used to be a place where we made things. Biden gets this, though his political operation may or may not.
10. The political crisis in commercial America is that policy isn't made by public institutions, but private monopolists and financiers either in gilded cities here or in Beijing or London. Democracy in the civic sphere is tenuous, but we are living in a commercial autocracy.
11. Google, Facebook, and Amazon are pace setters, both far more powerful than traditional monopolists and dominant in regulating the critical lifeblood of democracy - information. We have never, and I mean never, allowed the consolidation of control over information like this.
12. The political crisis of corporate concentration is driving most other nasty trends we're seeing. We simply cannot make public policy if monopolists are making private policy to subvert it. And the converse is true. Breaking monopolies frees us to make policy again.

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Matt Stoller

Matt Stoller Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @matthewstoller

6 Nov
In 2017-2018 there was a debate among Dems about what happened, the side saying it was because Trump voters are unredeemable and evil won.

That debate has opened up again.
Trump’s narrow loss despite his massive governance failures show that what happened in 2016 wasn’t really about Hillary Clinton, but a deeper anger and mistrust towards Democrats.
The political problem for Democrats is that the GOP is now plotting to take the entire working class, and Dems kind of want them to take it.
Read 4 tweets
5 Nov
Democratic donors dramatically over-invest in elections and grassroots organizing and under-invest in actually understanding how to use the massive and complicated government they are about to take over.
It's an unpopular hot take but maybe hiring a few people to think about how to use the Commerce Department with its authority to, oh I don't know, restructure the entire economy, is better than handing Amy McGrath another eleventy zillion dollars.
The Federal government is a $5 trillion behemoth. Maybe it's a good idea to know stuff about how to run it.
Read 5 tweets
4 Nov
The problem with Nate Silver's framework has never been the models, but that the whole enterprise of trying to predict elections just to predict elections is fundamentally useless.
Nate Silver uses his models to disguise an elitist pro-Wall Street ideology. Here's his strong pro-bailout rant in Feb 2009 titled "Give Geithner a Break." fivethirtyeight.com/features/give-…
Here's @NateSilver538 during the financial crisis in 2009.

1. "I’m sorry, but somewhere between 99.9% and 99.999999% of us are severely underqualified to be making policy recommendations on this issue." This is neither the time nor the place for mass movements..."
Read 4 tweets
4 Nov
1. Let's get away from left-center debates and get to the two real Dem theories of social justice. (1) neoliberalism, or helping the individual with college education in a global corporate world (2) structuralism, which is downsize corporations so everyone has a bit of capital.
2. Both neoliberalism and structuralism have their cultures. One is very much McKinsey aristocracy philanthropy compliance oriented, the other is chip on your shoulder populist universalism. Think, Pete Buttigieg vs Thomas Frank.
3. The core of neoliberal political culture is to avoid talking about policy at all costs. Politics for neoliberals is only about what happens in elections, and to them there is simply no connection between government and elections. It's all messaging, narrative, left vs center.
Read 10 tweets
1 Nov
This dissenting statement from @chopraftc is an incredibly clear and honest assessment of the catastrophic role the FTC has played in pharmaceutical prices via mergers. ftc.gov/system/files/d…
"The FTC’s record when it comes to reviewing pharmaceutical mergers suggests that the agency will simply never seek to block a merger."

Ouch.
"Virtually every market participant I have spoken to in this industry believes that there is simply no risk of the FTC blocking an unlawful pharmaceutical merger outright."

Basically, hand the building over to the National Gallery so the public gets something useful out of it.
Read 4 tweets
30 Oct
So @ggreenwald @lhfang @mtracey @mtaibbi @davidsirota were skeptics of corporate power, surveillance, and Wall Street during the Bush and Obama eras. None of them like being hated but they don’t need to be liked. They are among the more curious free thinking writers out there.
I never really understood the establishment vehement hatred of criticism and being proved wrong. It’s unpleasant to be wrong of course but it’s how one learns.
Anyway I think it’s a fascinating time and both parties and most elite institutions are in flux. We missed big things like the pandemic and the public is unhappy. But I do think there’s real learning going on.

Weird to be optimistic but I am.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!