A person who would also be 'swaldman' but with a different first name than me seems accidentally to have signed up an email address that's mine to Trump mailing lists.

I've found it fascinating. The public conversation from Trump is all resentment and grievance, but the inside pitch to supporters is "I love you, I chose you, I need you" It's about making the supporter feel special, essential, part of the family.

I've redacted the S-beginning first name that isn't mine.

we are all the hare.

@realcaseyrollins funding the government is just regulating demand. the government doesn’t need cash — it is the source of that. but if it just prints cash, there’s too much demand and thus inflation. thus one important role of taxation is to regulate demand, to make sure the cash it spends into the economy, along with other factors, don’t undermine the real value of the money it prints. i agree with you that taxes like sales or value-added taxes are one good way to do that.

@realcaseyrollins taxes have different purposes. a sales tax helps regulate demand. the main point of the income tax, though it has been enfeebled first by Kennedy, then by Reagan, is to regulate the income distribution. progressive is its very point.

@realcaseyrollins very progressive, especially at the high end.

we think of dracula as this bad guy, but among his kind he is revered for offering a product that is organic, ethically-sourced, free-range.

@realcaseyrollins income tax! https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/03/the-us-federal-income-tax-in-pictures/index.html

@realcaseyrollins taxation isn’t theft. when we had a reasonable income tax structure in the late 1940s, no one was stolen from.

@jgordon @pluralistic we all tell ourselves sweet little lies.

@jching @pluralistic they are great, until they aren't. that's often how it goes.

how on earth did Microsoft do this, and not face any meaningful consequence?

i mean all software has bugs, sure. but if you are selling high-consequence software, when you are notified of security issues, you address them. is there no criminal liability in selling a product for money when you know it to be extraordinarily dangerous to your customers, making no good faith attempt to mitigate the risk?

by #ReneeDudley #DorisBurke https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-golden-saml-data-breach-russian-hackers

ht @pluralistic

"There's an implicit bargain that every monopolist makes… I will be a benevolent dictator who spends…windfall profits on maintaining product quality and security… [M]onopolists always violate this bargain. When faced with the decision to either invest in quality+security, or hand billions of dollars to their shareholders, they'll always take the latter. Why wldn't they? Once they have a monopoly, they don't have to worry abt losing customers to a competitor" @pluralistic https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

@Hyolobrika libertarianism absent democratic guardrails is very consistent with authoritarianism. the only state coercion you need is property rights enforcement to have authoritarianism under a plutocratic wealth distribution. everybody's free speech is harmless when all the distribution channels censor themselves in plutocratic interests. there are no demonstrations because the owner of the square doesn't permit them, though of course you have the "right" to demonstrate on your own property.

[new draft post] State capacity and authoritarianism https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/06/15/state-capacity-and-authoritarianism/index.html

people ask “why is the world silent?”

i quietly wonder, who imagined the world could speak?

Q: What does George W. Bush say at the sweaty end of a session of lovemaking?

A: Emission accomplished.

@realcaseyrollins you have to fight it from both sides. the humans are clever. if you don't put limits on the scale of their competition, they will push it always harder, and not confine themselves to constructive dimensions of competition. antitrust will always be whackamole while table stakes in a certain club are billions. you need antitrust. you also need to limit the prizes that incentivize dickish business practices. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/5031.html

@realcaseyrollins i have no problem with millionaires. even several tens of millionaires. sure, people should strive to become rich. they should not imagine they can become caesar, and should not have resources sufficient to overwhelm our politics.

@realcaseyrollins every billionaire is a policy failure, yes. rich is 10s of millions. much more than i'll ever have anything like and that's great. not enough to finance shadow governments as philanthropy, lobbying, and "business".