@terry_renaud @DylanRileyNLR Speaking as a slightly repentant left-neoliberal, much of the Marxist cultural turn was an attempt to build an orrery to explain why Engels's predictions about how the steampower mode of production would educate humanity for socialism went wrong. But, in my view, much of... 1/ @terry_renaud @DylanRileyNLR ...the orrery was unnecessary. The bifurcated world of mass steampower factories growing larger and larger as the ruling and middle classes grew smaller and smaller would have brought Engels's hopes of revolution rich countries much closer. (Whether those revolutions would... 2/

@postdiscipline Yes, the changing technology-driven forces-of-production hardware of society greatly constrain and shape the relations-of-production and superstructural econo-politico-socio-cultural software of society that puts the forces-of-production to work and does the distribution... 1/ @postdiscipline ...and utilization of our common and collective wealth.

Yes, feudal-era forces- and relations-of-production teach people that society is static, hierarchical, with who you are chosen for you by the role ascribed to you; that production is small-scale, handicraft, and... 2/

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality: It Is Harmful to My Psychological Health for Me to Read David Brooks, & BRIEFLY NOTED for 2023-01-13 Fr braddelong.substack.com/p/it-is-harmfu… ...Do you think that maybe doing your job required telling your readers back at the time, in the early 2000s, that neoliberal supply-side conservatism was played out? Do you think that maybe doing your job required telling your readers back at the time, in the early 2000s... 2/

open.substack.com/chat/posts/e6c…

There is an interesting debate between @david_glasner <uneasymoney.com/2023/01/01/you…> and @ojblanchard1 <

https://twitter.com/ojblanchard1/status/1608967176232525824

> going on.

I think the easiest way to conceptualize what I think of as the major point is to set up a model in which… 1/ …1. The central bank has a target rate of inflation.

2. The rate of inflation is a constant markdown applied to the rate of nominal wage increase.

3. The rate of increase of nominal wages that workers are able to demand, and enforce, is a declining function of the… 2/

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality: In Which Long-Time Netizen & Programmer-at-Arms Dave Winer Records a Podcast for Me, Personally braddelong.substack.com/p/in-which-lon… ...“The Fall of the Blogosphere”, by Stable Diffusion, via NightCafe

But since I have a Gutenberg-Galaxy brain, I feed it to text-recognition software <otter.ai>, and then edit the transcript.

But let me first link to a subsequent piece in which Dave muses… 2/

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality: Small People Dealing wiþ Looming Fascism, BRIEFLY NOTED For 2022-12-13 Tu braddelong.substack.com/p/small-people… I volunteered to write an introduction to the reissue of three of my favorite alternate-history novels: Jo Walton’s “Small Change” series <amazon.com/dp/B08L9GHPDC>

* "Farthing": Publishers Weekly: Starred: “World Fantasy Award–winner Walton (Tooth and Claw) crosses genres… 2/

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality -- John Quiggin on þe End of Neoliberalism, & BRIEFLY NOTED: For 2022-12-12 Mo braddelong.substack.com/p/john-quiggin… ...Very flattering to get such attention: <insidestory.org.au/the-slow-demis…>

Quiggin’s point that our measurements of growth are invalid in the information age point is, I think, a very good one.

Perhaps this is the way to put it… 2/

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality -- PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIV: R&D & Industrial Resarch Labs braddelong.substack.com/p/podcast-hexa… Here in the U.S., at the leading edge of the world economy, measured producivity growth fell off a cliff in the late 1960s, recovreed somewhat in the 1980s, resumed what had been its “normal” pre-1970 pace in the 1990s with the dot-com boom—and then fell off a cliff again… 2/

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality -- Inequality Continues to Flummox Us: The 2022 U.C. Berkeley Stone Lecture braddelong.substack.com/p/inequality-c… ...4. What to Do?

Finally, I arrive at the fourth part of my talk: Given all this, what should I do? What should we do? What should you do?

Remember, first, that economics’s utilitarian roots place an extremely high value on equality. We have every reason to think that… 2/

Launches tomorrow: "Adam Smith’s America: How a Scottish Philosopher Became an Icon of American Capitalism” by @miss_glory

<amazon.com/dp/0691203814> <amazon.com/dp/0691203814>

“Adam Smith’s America is a fascinating exploration of the politics of political economy… how economic ideas have been used and reimagined... an important inquiry into... disputes over markets, states, and moral values.”―Emma Rothschild… 2/

Another Excellent & Thoughtful Review of Slouching: Adam Gurri, & BRIEFLY NOTED on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/another-exce… ...CONDITION: Muskker Has Lost All Control of Its ‘Bot Infection: Conspirador Norteño: ‘It's a Sunday, and some chucklehead has decided to bestow ~24,000 newly-created fake followers on my account. All are accounts created in November 2022 with 0 tweets, a default profile… 2/

In Which I Quibble wiþ Paul Krugman, & on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/in-which-i-q… ...CONDITION: The Benefits of Central Heating! I went to a "Slouching Towards Utopia" <bit.ly/3pP3Krk> panel at the SSHA Convention at the Palmer House in Chicago. It was 15F outside. I had the best possible discussants. And the video should be up in a couple of… 2/

PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIII: Crypto Fraud! Edition on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/podcast-hexa… ...Pre-Note: One thing we did not get into was the relationship between the claps of FTX and the associated fraud and “Effective Altruism”—Effective Altruism not so much as a philosophy, but rather as a doctrine preached by a life-coach.

If you want to have the… 2/

“We’re Þe New York Times! & We Must Write Something! But We Don’t Know Anything! & We Won’t Learn! & We’re Scared to Say Anything!”, & on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/were-e-new-y… ...As you know, I have been flummoxed by a lot of things in the collapse of FTX, Alameda, SBF, and so forth. But this is the thing that has flummoxed me the most. Either the New York Times’s reporters and editors are pig-ignorant about crypto, or they are actively working… 2/

Quantum Financial Suicide, SBF, & FTX, & on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/quantum-fina… ...CONDITION: SBF & FTX: Two truly remarkable and bizarre things to read:

* Adam Fisher: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex—And Maybe You Should Too…

* Tracy Alloway & Joe Weisenthl: Transcript: Sam Bankman-Fried and Matt Levine on How to Make Money in Crypto… 2/

Mitch McConnell as Republican Leader, & on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/mitch-mcconn… Consider that so far in this century the concentration of democrats in large population states has meant that a 50-50 nation would generate a Senate that woul have a 56-44 Republican majority.

Consider that in 2009, Mitch McConnell and his Republican Senate leader laid… 2/

A Semi-Platonic Dialogue on “Slouching Towards Utopia” with Timothy Burke on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/a-semi-plato… ...This from the wise and learned Timothy Burkenis what I hoped for in my most pleasant dreams: a very serious engagement with "Slouching Towards Utopia" <bit.ly/3pP3Krk> by a very smart and thoughtful person who thinks differently than I do.
Indeed, now I can… 2/

I Had Thought þe Twitter-Merger Drama Was Over?, & on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/i-had-though… This was a bizarre thing to wake up to Friday morning: <bloomberg.com/news/articles/…>

First of all: Musk is paying out of his and his investors’ own pocket for a great deal of Ukraine’s battlefield communications. To call someone doing that “increasingly Russia-friendly” is… 2/

The Best “Slouching Towards Utopia” Event I Have Done Is Now Lost to History… Tears in the Rain... on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/the-best-slo… It is truly a shame that my USC Slouching Towards Utopia <bit.ly/3pP3Krk> event was not videotaped: it went the best of all my events so far, in large part because I was talking to the excellent Jake Soll—and we were also talking about his excellent new book… 2/

FIRST: Alan Blinder’s Monetary & Fiscal History, & on Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality braddelong.substack.com/p/first-alan-b… Let me start this week off by recommending the very, very nice: Alan Blinder: A Monetary and Fiscal History of the United States, 1961-2021 <google.com/books/edition/…>. It is all about how the U.S. government has tried to manage the country’s macroeconomy in attempting to… 2/

https://twitter.com/delong/status/1581430271840092161

THE DOMED HALLS OF ILMARIN ON MOUNT TANIQUETIL, VALINOR
THE HIGH COUNCIL OF THE VALAR IS IN SESSION
SECOND AGE

MANWË: Well, this has been a long meeting. I hope that there is no further business… 1/ VAIRË: There is something in the pattern, something in the weave... We may developing another Middle-Earth problem...

MANWË: I guess this is something that cannot wait until our next regular council meeting next millennium? 2/