There was a great @jwmason.bsky.social piece talking about why "wealth" measured as market values seems so much less in Germany than in countries obviously much poorer than Germany. This one I think. jwmason.org/slackwire/we...

@robertmanduca.bsky.social has a series of remarkable papers on related issues, eg bsky.app/profile/robe...

These aren't about housing questions per se, but the throughline is that what constitutes private wealth is very institutionally determined. Home-ownership and renting are closer in Germany because many of what in the US are the rights of owners institutionally belong to renters.

How we allocate those rights is a choice. Many of the ways that we measure "wealth" presuppose that certain choices are natural and should be measured, while other choices are odd and should be relegated to the netherworld of qualitative description. Of course we privilege what we quantify.

i wonder if we're not suffering from a malfunction due to an inability to discriminate between failing to hold power to account and extending grace and tolerance in ordinary exchanges. 1/

people here (correctly!) perceive that failures of accountability, often justified in terms of nice liberal ideals like tolerance, pragmatism, and ostentatious due process, have led us to catastrophe. being more punitive seems justified. 2/

but tolerance really is a great thing, the lubricant of a free civilization. the mistake is that what elites have whitewashed as tolerance has in fact been immunity from formal accountability, sometimes legal, sometimes career. 3/

formal accountability and interpersonal tolerance are different things, belong to profoundly different spheres! 4/

people should be forgiven for confusing them, because those who govern us (democrats as much as republicans!) have intentionally blurred the boundaries. but it is making life a lot less pleasant, and conversations less productive, and is part of why we had a backlash against "wokeness" i think. /fin

they don't have a real party system. they have a first-past-the-post electoral system without fully entrenched major parties. in every election, it becomes the task to become perceived as the likely winner closest to some 50%-ish group in your constituency, and so the object of strategic voting. 1/

unlike under true proportional representation, where you can represent your constituents and no one else, the British system leaves every party and aspiring MP with a strong incentive to avoid alienating litmus-test voters. /fin

it would be nice if this iranian government would collapse, even nicer if this israeli government would, and nicer still if this american government would.

(to be very clear, this post in an american context advocates "collapse" in the sense of impeachment and conviction of members of the current administration, of if that cannot be arranged, overthrow and repudiation at the ballot box.)

* or

"conservatism" — not really, radical neofeudalism / fascism — ate the hippies and, um, traditional counterculture by appropriating transgressiveness during a period when the 'new left', under the banner of affluent professionals of the hippie generation, became the new establishment. 1/

that left an opening. those affluent professionals had tolerated, really celebrated, a growing class gap. but most ex-hippies were not comfortable liberal professionals. 2/

most were people who felt like losers left behind while the arc of history barreled forward, and who still romanticized their youths and transgression, sticking it to the man. 3/

so the fascists appropriated transgression, attached it to (well deserved!) resentment of the then "liberal" establishment with its grating self-celebration as vanguard of virtue and progress. 4/

Now we have boomer MAGA / MAHA at all the classic rock tiki bars in Florida, persuaded that progress and public virtue are frauds, false consciousness, an ideology of the ruling class intended to reconcile them to their own oppression. 5/

The best you can do is stick it to the man by smoking a joint and having some beers and wearing MAGA hat 'cuz fuck 'em. 6/

And then there's the tech right, who are rich as fuck, and need an ideology that justifies that, but who fancy themselves disruptors, rebels, who've been on 'shrooms and at burning man for years. They switched to MAGA as soon as there was a hint the liberals might embrace some (tepid) leftism. 7/

One side from resentment of its lack of privilege, the other for protection of its privilege, went to war with a liberal establishment and found common ground in icons of transgression. /fin