this idea that an institutionally legal but morally stolen election (say legislatures in key states overrule voters, citing “irregularities”) will be prevented on the streets risks a first time as farce, second time as tragedy catastrophe. 1/
every stern denouncement of the 1/6 “insurrection”, every demand on Rachel Maddow that a tough, militarized response should have crushed the insurgents to spare our legislators their traumas, will be hauled out. 2/
provocateurs will intentionally seed chaos in order to force law enforcement and the military, who were and would be appropriately reticent to intervene in this kind of thing heavy handedly, to suppress “the riots”. 3/
relying on a “color revolution” to save America from its own bad laws when the public is roughly 50/50 divided between our two Manichean conflict-entrepreneur parties is reckless fantasy. 4/
if Democrats want institutions more resistant to usurpation by a determined minority, they have to get their shit together and fix the laws while they have the capacity to do so. 5/
Democrats’ weakness condemns the country civil war or collapse to “competitive authoritarianism” as much as Republicans’ plain ambition for stable minority rule. /fin
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so often we treat normative problems as positive problems. pre-ACA one might have done all kinds of modeling of the causes of health care uninsuredness, but the meaningful cause was absence of policy. (and it still is!) 1/
positive, empirical work is what most social scientists do. data is “receipts”, authority, publications. “surely we need to understand the problem if we are going to solve it.” 2/
but absent strong levers to anchor outcomes, social affairs can be endlessly complex, so noisy our models decide what we see, and modelers with divergent priors will never agree. 3/
This by @mattyglesias is very good. But as he hints in the concluding sentence, it’s no good blaming a mass audience, because a mass audience isn’t a locus that can be held accountable. 1/ slowboring.com/p/media-negati…
The institutions through which mass audiences exert effects can be held accountable, and are malleable. 2/
And “true” public preferences are more complicated than mass audience click throughs. Altering institutions for better outcomes need imply neither censorship nor elite paternalism. 3/
can we please unbundle redistricting reform from the For The People Act and see who wants to go on record in favor of redistricting? 1/
these very aggregated bills destroy Congressional accountability. you can always find cover to support or not yo somewhere in the thing. 2/
this issue is universal. one of the Congresspeople I most admire is @BernieSanders. he votes for the awful 90s crime bill because it includes the valuable Violence Against Women Act. what are we supposed to do with that? /fin
some “investments” are “scams” in the sense that the entrepreneur has no intention of doing anything but take the money and run. but most “scam” investments are not that. 1/
most scam investments are scammy because the issuer provides themselves a free option. they DO intend to try to do something or another with the proceeds. but they structure the use of proceeds such that they get rich regardless of whether that something or another works out. 2/
the great thing about this is that the scammer persuades even themselves that the thing they’re doing isn’t a scam. they believe in the project! that money they’re paying themselves from investor proceeds is fair compensation! 3/
stimulus is a bad metaphor. it is much too “one and done”, invites comparisons with speed (“stimulants”) and therefore suggestions of hangover, withdrawal morbidities, pathological dependence. 1/
it is better to establish a simple principle: at all times, there should be a very ample flow of real purchasing power to all humans willing to contribute to current production. 2/
when this principle conflicts with the maintenance of past accumulations of real purchasing power, the power of past accumulations must yield. 3/
One way to understand it is that Facebook didn’t do a good enough job of identifying and suppressing a dangerous, harmful movement. Events lend some urgency to this point of view. 2/
But another way is to notice that Facebook is actively in the business of researching and improving techniques to suppress social movements on its platform, not just astroturfed, but what employees describe as "organic harmful movements". 3/