[new draft post] A theory of Elons https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/02/25/a-theory-of-elons/index.html

I don't know, but general PPP is a bad measure. Military procurement is dangerously liable to waste and corruption. You have address outputs, not inputs. Europe is far from matching Russia's artillery production. The US too. That's shocking, shameful, surprising to econs who treat GDP as fungible.

Absolutely. I'm not saying some law of history says it will happen. A presumption of inertia and muddling thru says it most likely will not. I am saying it would be a good idea, though, and hoping to participate in the persuading of that! (It's weird to want Germany to rearm while my govt is Nazi.)

We'll see. I'm skeptical "peace" in Ukraine meaningfully happens. Perhaps a ceasefire or armistice, but it may remain obvious there is no genuine peace. Europe, like all of us, needs to address how it curates its information environment. But it's more likely than we are to make progress.

our character flaw.

Military Keynesianism can be a unifying project, though. Like a few years ago the AOC/Sanders wing hoped a Green New Deal might've been. It can coopt a lot of naysayers with capitalist opportunities and good jobs.

i also don't like to be overly prescriptive about language, and find it annoying when people are overly prescriptive of mine. i'd not opt to put Nazis in government, even if i thought they would remedy this annoyance.

if Europeans can get over their debt phobia (or tax the effing rich), a private sector depression would be a great opportunity to devote a few years to building the military they now urgently require.

DOGE is the new NSA. #transparency

❤️

on the left you have people annoyed they can't make rent and might die while they appeal their chemo denial. on the right you have people annoyed they'd get in trouble if they called someone "retard" and broadcast it to potentially millions of people. both sides have legitimate grievances.

a thing about cutting medicaid is it's the most cost effective piece of the American health care system, with the possible exception of the VA.

i worry Trump's fantasies with respect to the Gaza Strip may create incentives among hopefully credulous Israelis to create a similar circumstance in the West Bank.

love the kid the rest of us can wait.

yes. right now. you are extrapolating decades forward from how firms are operating just as regs are lifting? that strikes me as unreliable.

God bless America.

i don’t think we should assume that at all. we are in a period of expanding chaos, the wheel is in spin. it’s hubris to imagine you know where it lands. the present crew knows only how to wreck, has no clue how to stabilize. they are courting disasters worse than GFC.