(the finance guy in me thinks it’s a bit much to describe a liability whose net present value has appreciated relative to the deeper liability it once was as an asset, even though it’s certainly true current borrowers wish they could be so fortunate!)

(if you could freely dispose of your low rate mortgage the way you can generally freely dispose of your assets, you would instantly do so!)

if almost twice as many people voted, what difference do you think it would make? they’d have the same menu of choices the rest of us have. 1/

of course i encourage everyone to vote! but it’s not enough. absent changes to our electoral system, voting has been largely neutered. 2/

with an incredible lift (given the suppression they will try to bring to bear) we may get another Democratic administration. will we then be, yet again, one mild inflation away from fascism? that’s a deeper problem than an electoral result. 3/

we have to organize to remake our institutions, starting i think with our electoral system and political parties. yes, we need more participation! but unfortunately via channels less straightforward than just turning out to vote. /fin

I just think you are mistaken to think that it is. 1/

We have a voting system that converges on two political parties at pain of splitting your coalition and harming your own interests if you choose a third, and political parties captured by leaderships that don’t represent most of our interests. 2/

Voter turnout, donations, every form of evidence of energy and participation have been on an upswing as our democracy is in collapse. It’s an institutional problem, not an apathy problem. /fin

I tend toward a hopeful belief, not that human nature is inherently good, but that it is malleable, and under suitable circumstances and institutions, can in practice be good. 1/

Just how differently humans behave on x.com compared to almost how I've experienced them almost anywhere else should be a confirmative data point: bad institution, bad behavior! 2/

Nevertheless I have to confess that, at a level of intuition, perusing X pushes me toward a hopeless (and I still think false!) sense that we humans are inherently awful, perhaps irredeemable. 3/

I'm grateful to all of you here, who for all of our squabbles, are really just great. /fin

It's not the medallion system per se that seems neoliberal — I agree a state cap on taxi supply is not an obvious neoliberal cop. 1/

But once there was going to be a cap, making it cap-and-trade in a "free" market, indifferent to speculation or leasing arrangements, seems like a neoliberal approach to managing the cap (despite the kinds of pathologies that might and did emerge). 2/

Nevertheless, as a matter of history, the spiraling (then collapsing) market in NYC Taxi medallions seems to have been an unanticipated consequence of how the medallions were issued and defined, not any neoliberal economic design. The market that emerged surprised the system's initiators. /fin

Yeah, it looks like that's right! Medallions when issued weren't intended to become speculative assets, but they were in fact transferable from the start and their market price higher quickly appreciated. My bad! www.politico.com/states/new-y...

(oh! i've just replicated your search! my bad twice!)