Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
really?!? now that is some deep dish.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i refused the cookies. i should have asked for a plane. www.interfluidity.com/posts/125740...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“the White House and DOJ concluded that because the gift is not conditioned on any official act, it does not constitute bribery” thank Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts for making this new day possible.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
great (terrifying) piece @benansell.bsky.social benansell.substack.com/p/fadfo
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think this “reconciliation”, from a piece by me a while back drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/08/14/f... may hold for “communities” defined by demographics as well as by place.
Text: With this account, we can reconcile the conflicting evidence about economic anxiety and cultural resentment. At the communal level, economic factors predict which places are likely to become susceptible to a fascist dynamic, because the case for dividing and culling begins with a perception of scarcity. Communities don’t triage when resources are widely perceived to be abundant and secure. But at an individual level, within distressed communities, the people most enthusiastic to participate in the fascist dynamic are not likely to be the weak and dispossessed (who after all, might be susceptible to culling, depending what internal enemy gets identified) but those who feel safe in their own position and have preexisting resentments against candidate enemies. The political dynamic can’t successfully take hold, has no fertile habitat, without the “economic anxiety”. The members of the community who most enthusiastically participate in the thrill of fascism are not primarily the downtrodden, however, but relatively safe people who perceive an opportunity long denied to give effect to resentments they stewed in privately when prosperity and security bred norms of magnanimity and tolerance in their communities.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
we should refer to it as the nnylf effect.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
they’re also the most “natural”. they literally train your body how to protect itself then fuck off and disappear.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
yeah. that line was definitely a precursor to all this, and a reminder there’s more continuity than we sometimes like to imagine between these fuckers now and so-called “traditional Republicans”.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
lying doesn’t quite capture the pervasive fucking with reality. most lying relies upon a shared, broader consensus. no i did not eat that cookie, we agree on the former existence of the cookie, where it was, that it was intended for someone. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
these guys it’s like the cookie is a zebra and suddenly they all behave as if the cookie was a zebra and mock you for talking about chocolate chips what the fuck are those? /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
he’s working on it god bless him! still a much harder lift than just changing rates and brackets under existing law.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
modern witchcraft, in a pejorative sense, is detaching words in public speech profoundly from any defensible meaning, for personal or political gain. it can work! but it pollutes the epistemological commons, our collective ability to make sense of the world and to act fruitfully within and upon it.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
by "no one is above the law", they mean "no one is above the donald". they believe no law or even constitution binds the donald, or binds them when they act with what they claim to be his writ.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
yes. wealth defined as total net worth, including all assets. and perhaps as gross assets. no individual should be in the business of holding and controlling $1B in assets, even if they have $900M in debt against them.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
agreed, but see bsky.app/profile/inte...
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i don't think that's a fair characterization. i think if asked to answer "which is more progressive?" i think most people would say wealth taxes. and it's a great point that high income taxes without wealth taxes fix old winners rather than even the score. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
nevertheless, income taxes already exist. changing levels and brackets is a far easier lift than developing and imposing a new tax and necessarily complex enforcement mechanisms. so "progressives" tend to talk about income taxes more, as lower hanging fruit. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
plus marginal income tax rates alone have had and would have virtuous effects. 3/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
in particular, the very wealthy, while not expropriated by income taxes, lose their capacity and so motivation to engage in destructive rat races to get richer and richer. 4/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
instead, they allow income to collect in firms as retained earnings, where other stakeholders (workers, customers, vendors) compete for payouts with shareholders whose heart isn't in the fight, given the tax rate they'd pay. 5/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
in other words, taxing payouts to the already wealthy is a powerful tool in favor of a better predistribution, even if it cannot alone rid us of our Elons. 6/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
not getting rid of our Elons, though, is better than breeding more of them in the name of not locking in current winners. that Elon and Jeff were able to knock Bill off his pedestal never for a moment helped the rest of us. 7/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
of course what we really want is both high marginal income tax rates, and wealth taxes to ensure no one can hold wealth of more than ~$100M over anything but a brief period. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
94% was what FDR brought marginal rates on then very high incomes to. Seems like a good number to me.
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
if the answer to bad speech is more speech… drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/03/09/v...
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Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i have no idea who does or doesn’t deserve credit for helping to negotiate it, but i’m incredibly grateful there’s a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i would really appreciate it if India and Pakistan would just not do this. please.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
sometimes my enjoyment of the present is overwhelmed by premonitions of future nostalgia.