Sign in

Bill Janeway

@050343.bsky.social
76 followers 87 following 32 posts

Venture capitalist emeritus, economist of innovation at Cambridge University

PostsRepliesMedia
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
open.substack.com/pub/eatingpo...
open.substack.com
Robert Moses's unfinished business should be Mamdani's priority
The mayor-elect has 25,000 job applicants in 24 hours and a civil service system designed to keep him from hiring any of them
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Why is this not on the front page of the New York Times? From Politico: www.politico.com/news/2025/10...
politico.com
‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat
Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Cory Doctorow offers evidence that the New Deal lives in the Digital Era and offers a model for Coop/Municipal ownership of digital infrastructure: pluralistic.net/2025/10/03/w...
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: When your ISP pays you (03 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 03/10/2025
Ian Harnett in today’s FT; “The AI capex endgame is approaching” : “My perspective on technology bubbles has been shaped by five themes that emerged from William Janeway’s book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy.
010
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 18/09/2025
Andrew Odlyzko, mathematician/historian, explains how crypto exemplifies the “post-truth” world: www-users.cse.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc...
www-users.cse.umn.edu
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
Where is Jamie Dimon? Where is Larry Fink: www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/b...
cnn.com
Trump fires a senior official over jobs numbers | CNN Business
President Donald Trump has fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whom he accused of manipulating the monthly jobs reports for “political purposes.”
020
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 18/07/2025
Someone should tell Trump about what happened to Oscar Wilde when he sued the Marquis of Queensbury for defamation.
010
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Important post today by @pkrugman.bsky.social on the NYC mayoralty primary: substack.com/app-link/pos...
substack.com
Mamdani and the Moguls of Madness
Will he be a good mayor? Nobody knows. But the hysteria is revealing.
020
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
@pkrugman.bsky.social is so right: “The point is that both men start from the presumption that the U.S. government is an entirely corrupt….Musk’s only mistake was in underestimating the depths of Trump’s lack of principles, imagining that he was the kind of corrupt politician who stays bought”
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 01/06/2025
Strong post from The Bulwark on more destruction from RFK Jr: open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...
open.substack.com
RFK Jr. May Have Just Ruined Our Best Weapon Against Bird Flu
He just made two bad decisions on vaccines, and he made them in the worst way possible.
010
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
2/ The Trump/Musk Administration is working effectively to do the same for China in so 31 weeks www.billjaneway.com/crippling-am... The latest blow is to the NSF: www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Exclusive: NSF director to resign amid grant terminations, job cuts, and controversy
“I have done all I can,” says Sethuraman Panchanathan, a Trump appointee who has led agency since 2020
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
1/ In 1914, Germany was the global leader in science and at the technological frontier in such key domains as chemical and electrical engineering. It took 31 years - assisted by losing 2 world wars, hyperinflation, Hitler’s expulsion of Jewish scientists - to pass leadership to the US.
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
This is what you need to know about the US research ecosystem…and the Trump/Musk effort to destroy it: www.billjaneway.com/crippling-am...
billjaneway.com
Crippling America's Innovation Economy — Bill Janeway
073
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
NB that this letter ups the costs to Columbia if it does fold.
1657
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 06/04/2025
www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/trum...
project-syndicate.org
Crippling America’s Innovation Economy | by William H. Janeway - Project Syndicate
William H. Janeway warns that the pillars of US dynamism and competitiveness are being systematically toppled.
000
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
The entire permanent staff of the Division of Environmental Health Science and Practice was laid off. This division addresses issues such as asthma and air pollution, climate change and health, childhood lead poisoning, and cancer clusters.
772244639037
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/trum...
project-syndicate.org
Crippling America’s Innovation Economy | by William H. Janeway - Project Syndicate
William H. Janeway warns that the pillars of US dynamism and competitiveness are being systematically toppled.
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Cory Booker made history. Now it's our turn. open.substack.com/pub/borowitz...
open.substack.com
Cory Booker made history. Now it's our turn.
A call to action.
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
No longer surprising. Get her daily letter directly
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
RFKJr.’s strategy for saving Social Security: reduce the life expectancy of Americans.
000
Reposted by Bill Janeway
John Skiles Skinner @skiles.blue · 21/03/2025
Listen: maybe I'm wrong and this is just the worst software deployment of my career, not actually a conspiracy against democracy. Maybe these guys just don't see they are frittering away all product and service design knowledge in the agency. And don't even know that they lack this knowledge.
563078265
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
In fairness, there are a bunch of highly prominent libertarian Fedsoc people putting their names to this, expressing a general left-right consensus on free speech and universities. It would be nice to see Columbia university leadership pushing back instead of rolling over
nybooks.com
A Statement from Constitutional Law Scholars on Columbia | Eugene Volokh, Michael C. Dorf, David Cole
We write as constitutional scholars—some liberal and some conservative—who seek to defend academic freedom and the First Amendment in the wake of the
25620
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Tim O'Reilly @timoreilly.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Despite the somewhat confusing title, the body of this post is anything but confusing. It should be called "Understanding DOGE through the lense of AI Preppers." It makes so much sense of the enormous gamble Musk is taking with DOGE and the risks that come with it.
programmablemutter.com
Should AGI-preppers embrace DOGE?
There's magical thinking about the magical thinking
032
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 16/03/2025
subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025...
subscriber.politicopro.com
POLITICO Pro: Top broadband official exits Commerce Department with sharp Musk warning
“Stranding all or part of rural America with worse internet so that we can make the world's richest man even richer is yet another in a long line of betrayals by Washington,” Evan Feinman warned.
000
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Gary Marcus @garymarcus.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Standing with Hinton, standing with science. Please @standupforscience.bsky.social March 7, links enclosed. open.substack.com/pub/garymarc...
open.substack.com
Hinton vs Musk
Standing with my long-term nemesis, standing with science
833475
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Great news, Diane: well earned!
110
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
open.substack.com/pub/programm...
open.substack.com
ChatGPT is great at Stakhanovite propaganda
Comrades, we must seize the opportunity of LLMs if we are to be socialists
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 01/03/2025
Where are Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama x.com/Liz_Cheney/s...
010
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
bookshop.org/lists/united.... There us an equivalent in the UK. The enable local bookshops to sell line and share with them. Note: “.org”/NOT “.com”
bookshop.org
United States
Checkout out this list on Bookshop
020
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Edward Luce @edwardluce.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
All those billions and Jeff Bezos still can't afford dignity
502176345
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Ariel Ron @arielron.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Interesting argument in this FT op-ed from today. The logic here parallels the work my friend @maggor.bsky.social has been doing about railroads in the 19c US, which argues that state-level RR rate regulation didn't just rein in capital but promoted a particular path of regional development.
283
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Mark Cuban @mcuban.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
@chrismurphyct.bsky.social why are you not posting on here first ? You have some great things to say. You are trying some great things. Yet you post on X where 100pct of the replies are meaningless and hateful. It's not all roses here, but the engagement has depth and real convos happen
1371498346637
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Tim O'Reilly @timoreilly.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
Henry Farrell's musings on the "Silicon Valley reading list" and what its readers miss in some of its canonical works is, as always, enlightening.
bloomberg.com
Silicon Valley’s Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions
The tech ‘canon’ of books and ideas over-indexes on great men and celebrates small teams that changed the world.
1133
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Mark Little @marklittle.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
BBC asked leading AI tools 100 basic questions, using its articles as sources. Significant issues with just over half of the answers. Clear factual errors in a fifth Where answers included quotes from BBC articles, more than 1 in 10 were altered, or didn’t exist www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...
bbc.co.uk
Deborah Turness - AI Distortion is new threat to trusted information
38746
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
“False Economies” - My latest Project Syndicate Long Read: www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/econ...
project-syndicate.org
False Economies | by William H. Janeway - Project Syndicate
William H. Janeway highlights the high cost of the single-minded focus on efficiency that has come to dominate the discipline.
000
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
This is really excellent
39865147
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
January 6th, four years ago today. “A day of love”
39599552122
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow – No trackers, no a… @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy · 06/01/2025
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: Winning coalitions aren't always governing coalitions (06 Jan 2025)
Today's links Winning coalitions aren't always governing coalitions: You can take power by making promises, but wielding power means breaking them. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. This day in history: 2005, 2020 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. Winning coalitions aren't always governing coalitions (permalink) Winning an election is easier than it looks: all you have to do is convince a bunch of different groups that you will use power to achieve their desires. Bonus points if you can convince groups with mutually exclusive goals that you'll deliver for them – the coalition of "people who disagree about everything" is hard to assemble, but it sure is large! Politically, a "conservative" is someone who believes that there is a small group of people who were born to rule, and a much larger group of people who were born to be ruled over. As Corey Robin writes in The Reactionary Mind, this is the one trait that unifies all the disparate strains of conservative thought: imperialists, monarchists, capitalists, white supremacists, misogynists, Christian nationalists, Hindu nationalists and supporters of Israeli genocide in Palestine: https://coreyrobin.com/books/the-reactionary-mind/ These groups all agree that power should be hierarchical, that your position in a hierarchy is something you're born with, and that letting people who were "meant" to be at the bottom of the hierarchy rise to the top puts society so out of balance that it's actually a threat to human survival. That's why conservatives of all stripes get so furious about "DEI" – any kind of affirmative action program serves as a defective sorting hat, putting the incompetent and unsuitable into positions of power over other peoples' lives. It's why "DEI" is the go-to scapegoat for any kind of disaster, including giant ships crashing into bridges: https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-dei-utah-lawmaker-phil-lyman-misinformation But while conservatives all agree that some of us are born to be in charge and others are born to be bossed around by our innate superiors, they have irreconcilable differences about who is meant to be in charge. British imperialists who pine for the Raj have views that are fundamentally at odds with the views of Hindu nationalists. They're both "conservative" movements, but they're actually bitter enemies. For a conservative movement to win power, it has to convince the people whom it would relegate to the bottom of the hierarchy to support that goal (AKA "getting turkeys to vote for Christmas"); and it must convince other conservatives that they will be able to establish a hierarchy that accommodates multiple, co-equal ruling elites. The first tactic is well-established. LBJ summed it up neatly: If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you. The second one requires far more tactical thinking. Some elite groups are able to form coalitions by carving out exclusive zones: think of the friendly feeling among Modi, Orban, Erdogan, bin Salman, Trump, Milei, et al. These people all aspire to dictatorship, all espouse their superior blood – a source of personal and racial superiority – and hypothetically all believe that the world would be better if everyone (including their foreign counterparts) would take their orders. One way to resolve this tension is to carve up the world geographically, which is why so many despots who seized power by promising to build ethno-states can co-exist with one another and even cheer one another on. Let Orban have Hungary, give Turkey to Erdogan, and let Bibi Netanyahu annex all of Gaza. Sure, in their hearts of hearts, each of these men secretly believe themselves to be racially and personally superior to the others, but so long as they all stay out of one another's turf, there's no reason to make a big deal out of that. Another way to resolve this tension is to carve up the world temporally: think of the alliance between Christian nationalists and Israeli genocidiers. In the USA, "Christian Zionists" outnumber Jews who identify as Zionists: https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/qanda-for-every-1-jewish-zionist-there-are-30-christian-zionists-and-netanyahu-exploits-this-15656249 But Christian Zionists aren't philosemites. They hate Jews and believe that we are all going to hell for murdering Christ. Their support for Israel isn't grounded in a belief in the necessity of a Jewish ethno-state – it arises out of the apocalyptic belief that Christ will return once Jews "return to the Holy Land" – albeit only briefly, before being cast into a lake of fire for all eternity. Like British imperialists and the Hindu nationalists, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists are not on the same side. However, unlike British imperialists and Hindu nationalists, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists want the same thing…for a while. Both groups support the establishment of a Jewish entho-state in Israel, they just differ sharply as to what happens after that comes to pass. So long as they don't dwell on that moment in the future, they can stand shoulder to shoulder, fighting together for an Israeli state that operates with absolute US support and total international impunity. Coalitions who defer the question of how they'll use power to after they've gained power are using time (rather than space) as a buffer that keeps their differences from smashing together until they shatter. But time and space aren't the only buffers for the differences between coalition partners – there's also class. "Class" has been the most important, most useful buffer for conservativism since the Reagan revolution. Reagan came to power by forging an alliance with evangelicals, whose cult leaders had historically demanded that members focus their energies (and cash donations) on the church, while avoiding politics as "worldly." Reagan promised the Christian right a bunch of culture war stuff – bans on abortion, punishment for uppity women and racial minorities, prayer in school, segregation academies, etc – that his financial backers frankly didn't give a shit about. By all means, let working class evangelicals homeschool their kids and teach them that the Earth is 5,000 years old, it doesn't matter to Wall Street, who will reap a giant tax-cut and also send their kids to private schools with rigorous curriculum. Bankers' wives and daughters will always be able to afford to fly out of state (or across the border) for abortion care, they will never die of AIDS in the charity wing of a community hospital, their daughters won't be trapped by bans on no-fault divorces. For the past 40 years, American oligarchs and would-be oligarchs have entered into enthusiastic coalitions with virulently racist, sexist and homophobic groups, and maintained peace within their coalition by passing punitive, cruel laws that the rich can buy their way around. For many self-styled libertarians, the most important liberty is "not paying taxes" and this subordinates all other liberties, such that a "libertarian" will vote for a coalition whose platform promises to ban abortion, birth control, "interracial" marriage, and queer sex, so long as it also promises tax cuts. It's a weird kind of pro-freedom ideology that happily trades away (others') freedom for (your own) tax cuts: https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism Remember, Trump's first CPAC speech was sponsored by Goproud, a group of "fiscally responsible" gay Republicans who believed in gay rights, sure, but not as much as they believed in getting so rich that even if poor gay people were ground into dust, they could float above it all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOProud Class is the third buffer between the oligarchs of the right and the mass movement that provides the bulk for winning elections. After all, laws are for the little people, so by all means, we can promise – and even deliver – laws that we would never submit to, because we don't have to submit to them. This is Wilhoit's Law in action: Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit#Wilhoit's_law In a hierarchical society, class separates groups of people just as rigidly as time and space, and is every bit as useful a buffer as the other two forces. Until it isn't. Eventually – once you've banned abortion, once you've taken all the "controversial" books out of the library, once you've made affirmative action illegal – you reach the layer of non-negotiable culture war demands that the rich can't buy their way out of. Like immigration. Let's start with this: immigration doesn't have to result in wage suppression. Couple immigration with strong unions and a muscular labor rights regime and workers do just great. The more the merrier! America needs workers of every kind. What's more, the unions and labor laws in America owe their existence to immigrant workers, so there's nothing about immigration that is necessarily incompatible with winning rights for workers. But the possibility of importing some overseas union organizers isn't what motivates the finance wing of the conservative coalition to demand "guest-worker" programs like the H1B visa: https://twitter.com/RobertMSterling/status/1873175206073626660 H1B visas are "non-immigrant" visas, meaning that they are designed not to offer any path to permanent residence or citizenship. You can live in the US for a long time on an H1B, but you are bound over to your employer like a serf bound to a feudal estate: if you lose your job, you lose your right to abide in the country. That can mean losing your house, your car, your kids' school and friends. It can cost your spouse their job, because if you're kicked out of the country, they might well leave along with you, rather than remain alone here. H1B tech workers are the workers that tech-barons have dreamt of for decades. An H1B worker can't job-hop, and so needn't be lured to work with gourmet cafeterias, luxury gymnasiums, or other perks of the whimsical tech "campus." H1B workers can't quit if they don't like their stock-options packages: https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/10/the-proletarianization-of-tech-workers/ Tech bosses hate tech workers, and they always have. It's not affection that causes Jeff Bezos to allow his coders to come to work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand, while his delivery drivers piss in bottles and his warehouse workers are injured at three times the national average. Jeff Bezos neither cherishes his coders' kidneys, nor is he especially hostile to delivery drivers' need to pee – he just squeezes any and every worker in any and every way he can. Same for Tim Cook: the accomplishment that prompted Apple's board to elevate Cook to Steve Jobs' CEO office was the successful transfer of iPhone manufacturing to China. Specifically, Cook figured out how to work with his primary supplier, Foxconn, to create a working environment that produced reliable, precision-manufactured mobile devices, and all it took was creating a working environment so brutal that the company had to install suicide nets to catch the factory workers who couldn't stand it any longer: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/18/foxconn-life-death-forbidden-city-longhua-suicide-apple-iphone-brian-merchant-one-device-extract Apple's tech workers aren't worked to suicidal desperation, sure – but not because Tim Cook likes coders and hates factory workers. It's because he's afraid coders will quit, and he's not worried about replacing factory workers after they jump to their death. The point of the H1B program is to create a tech workforce that bosses no longer have to fear. Recall that when Elon Musk took over Twitter and circulated a mandatory "extremely hardcore" pledge that demanded that workers promise to subordinate their health and wellbeing to his profits, it prompted a mass departure, with the notable exception of workers whose immigration status (and/or insurance for serious health issues) depended on their ongoing employment at Twitter: https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/16/23462026/elon-musk-twitter-email-hardcore-or-severance When Musk's cronies gloated about shedding 20% of Twitter's workforce on "day zero," the workers they had in mind were the ones who didn't fear their bosses and wouldn't frog when the investor class shouted jump. "Sharpen your blades, boys" means we're slicing off workers who are laboring under the misapprehension that they are entitled to a say in their working conditions: https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/29/elon-musk-texts-discovery-twitter/ After all, America does not have a tech worker shortage. The US tech sector fired 260,000 skilled workers in 2023, and more than 150,000 were shown the door in 2024. When Musk and his fellow tech bosses complain that they need more "talent," what they mean is they need workers who are so terrified of being deported that they'll accept low wages, sleep under their desks, refuse to talk to union organizers, and, above all, do as they're told: https://youtube.com/shorts/N0FkyXFhmpo?si=GCh6bFqd31prazhz Trump won office by promising mutually exclusive outcomes to different parts of his coalition. To the nativists and bigots (and workers who'd bamboozled into thinking that their low salaries were the fault of other workers, not their bosses), he promised a halt to immigration. To the plutocrats, he promised a large and pliable workforce – of low-waged agricultural workers and of precarious H1B tech workers who'd discipline America's "entitled" tech workers: https://prospect.org/labor/2025-01-02-president-musk-american-workers-h1b-visas/ Now, he has to figure out how to keep everyone happy. Literally: the Speakership of Congress is only nine votes away from collapsing at any time (and until last week, it was just one vote away), and without Congress, Trump's ability to govern will be severely curtailed (see, for example, 2018-2020). Immigration isn't an issue like abortion: oligarchs can support abortion bans and still procure abortions when they need them. It's much harder to support an immigration ban and still procure precarious, low-waged workers for your business. It will take many years for American-born workers to be so brutalized and broken that they capitulate to the working conditions that American guest workers and undocumented workers accept, and bosses are impatient. It's hard to put on a convincing performance of banning immigration, as the UK's New Labour discovered. In the years leading up to the 2010 election, Labour – under Blair and then Brown – made a big show of "cracking down on immigration." At one point, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced that she was axing dozens of UK visa categories, while carefully not mentioning these were so niche that hardly anyone qualified for them. This created chaos for the people affected and their families – I lost my own "Highly Skilled Migrant" visa at this time and we had to move our wedding plans up by eight months so I could stay in the country with my British partner and our daughter – but it didn't do anything to quench the xenophobic rage that UKIP and the Tories had been stoking, and Labour lost its next election. American conservatives are rightly proud of their ability to form coalitions. They trumpet their ethic of "no enemies to the right" and contrast this with the "cancel culture" of progressives: https://www.wired.com/story/the-year-democrats-lost-the-internet/ It's true that purging your ranks of coalition partners who disagree with you at the margins is a severely self-limiting move. It's also true that the broader your coalition is, the easier it is to win power. The right has built a coalition of people who want opposite things. Infamously, Project 2025 isn't just a collection of terrifying ideas for running (and ruining) America – it's a collection of mutually exclusive terrifying ideas for running and ruining America: https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/14/fracture-lines/#disassembly-manual Trump's top health picks – RFK jr, Weldon, Oz, Makary, Bhattacharya, Nesheiwat – want mutually exclusive, irreconcilable things that are as impossible to compromise on as "banning immigration" while simultaneously "expanding the H1B program": https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/20/clinical-trial-by-ordeal/#spoiled-his-brand-new-rattle Big, diverse coalitions of people who normally oppose each other are great for winning power, but they're very bad for wielding power. Trump's majorities in Congress and the Senate are razor-thin, and while the Democrats had to suffer under the Manchin-Synematic Universe, the GOP's Klown Kar of Krazies has dozens of swivel-eyed loons who will happily blow up "must-pass" bills just for shits and giggles. What's more, the GOP has spent decades installing easily blown circuit breakers into the American legislative and administrative systems, from the filibuster to the debt ceiling. By design, these allow small groups of lawmakers to kill bills and hamstring presidential power. Trump's first attempt at removing one of these breakers – the senseless kabuki of the annual debt ceiling showdown – was a total failure: https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2024-12-19-debt-limit-should-absolutely-be-eliminated/ Musk thinks he can ram through policies that sizable portions of the GOP coalition would rather die than support. So far, Trump has proven a pliable puppet for Musk's ambitions. But the Musk-Trump coalition is every bit as fragile as any other in the GOP, and Trump is notoriously sensitive to accusations of weakness. Musk can threaten to primary any GOP lawmaker who gets in his way, but as the Kochs discovered after they unleashed the Tea Party, grievance-fueled, paranoid, heavily armed cults are hard to keep on a leash. The coming months are sure to be an all-out war of GOP infighting as the coalition must wield power without the useful buffers of space, time and class. They'll be an object lesson in the dangers of a coalition that's so broad that everyone is welcome, even people who'd happily line you and yours in front of a firing squad. But just because the right's attitude to coalitions is to have a mind so open its brains fall out, that doesn't mean the left should pursue a program of overwhelming ideological purity. Trump is a stupid guy with incoherent ideas, but look at how far he got by erecting such a big tent that anyone fit underneath it (even actual Nazis). The progressive coalition doesn't need to be that big. We can have enemies to the right. The hugs Kamala Harris bestowed on ghouls like Liz Cheney didn't win the election, and the medal Biden just gave her won't help either: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/us/politics/presidential-citizens-medal-liz-cheney.html Manchin and Synema can "fuck off until they come up to a gate with a sign saying 'You Can’t Fuck Off Past Here,' Climb over the gate, dream the impossible dream, and keep fucking off forever": https://michaelmarshallsmith.substack.com/about But the fact that some people don't belong in a progressive coalition, it doesn't follow that there's no room to make the coalition looser and broader. Sure, a big coalition makes it hard to wield power, but without that coalition, we'll never win power. Hey look at this (permalink) Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter Delivers Farewell Address https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-farewell-address (h/t Matt Stoller) Chinese Organized Crime’s Latest U.S. Target: Gift Cards https://www.propublica.org/article/chinese-organized-crime-gift-cards-american-retail (h/t Schneier) Some Public Limits of Everyday Weirdness (2025) https://bruces.medium.com/some-public-limits-of-everyday-weirdness-2025-754551c54a2d This day in history (permalink) #20yrsago T-shirt: HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC AND IT’S FUN https://web.archive.org/web/20040429213938/http://www.downhillbattle.org/postal/index.php #20yrsago Machine learning is innately conservative and wants you to either act like everyone else, or never change https://lareviewofbooks.org/blog/provocations/neophobic-conservative-ai-overlords-want-everything-stay/ #5yrsago Everything you wanted to know about money-laundering but were afraid to ask https://x.com/CZEdwards/status/1213597148274511872 #5yrsago Republican New York State Assembly leader publishes anti-drunk driving PSA shortly before drunkenly crashing a state-owned car https://web.archive.org/web/20200102042442/https://www.mpnnow.com/news/20200101/video-assemblyman-kolb-charged-with-dwi-after-victor-crash #5yrsago The estranged anarchist daughter of the Republican gerrymandering mastermind inherited and dumped all his files https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-anarchist-daughter-of-the-gops-gerrymandering-mastermind-just-dumped-all-his-maps-and-files-on-google-drive/ #5yrsago Permitting the growth of monopolies is a form of government censorship https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/ #5yrsago Podcast: Science fiction and the unforeseeable future: In the 2020s, let’s imagine better things https://ia802806.us.archive.org/35/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_322/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_322_-_Science_fiction_and_the_unforeseeable_future.mp3 Upcoming appearances (permalink) Musk’s Move Into Politics: Yanis Varoufakis and Cory Doctorow on Fighting Billionaire Control (Virtual), Jan 7 https://www.youtube.com/live/I0kvjNh7czM Picks and Shovels with Ken Liu (Boston), Feb 14 https://brooklinebooksmith.com/event/2025-02-14/cory-doctorow-ken-liu-picks-and-shovels Picks and Shovels with Charlie Jane Anders (Menlo Park), Feb 17 https://www.keplers.org/upcoming-events-internal/cory-doctorow Picks and Shovels with Wil Wheaton (Los Angeles), Feb 18 https://www.dieselbookstore.com/event/Cory-Doctorow-Wil-Wheaton-Author-signing Picks and Shovels with Dan Savage (Seattle), Feb 19 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-with-dan-savage-picks-and-shovels-a-martin-hench-novel-tickets-1106741957989 Picks and Shovels with John Hodgman (NYC), Feb 26 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-john-hodgman-picks-and-shovels-tickets-1131132841779 Cloudfest (Europa Park), Mar 17-20 https://cloudfest.link/ Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast (Remote), Mar 24 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189 DeepSouthCon63 (New Orleans), Oct 10-12, 2025 http://www.contraflowscifi.org/ Recent appearances (permalink) The Intersection of Storytelling and Technology (Grey Matter) https://www.greymatter.show/episodes/s1e109-cory-doctorow-the-intersection-of-storytelling-and-technology Can we avoid the enshittification of clean-energy tech? (Volts.wtf) https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-we-avoid-the-enshittification Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (HOPE XV) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrciT_dc2sc&list=PLcajvRZA8E0_tLLEh1COeAv-TcaDna2k1&index=32 Latest books (permalink) The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/) "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/. "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html) "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/. Upcoming books (permalink) Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025 Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 2025 Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud) A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025 Latest podcast: Daddy-Daughter Podcast 2024 https://craphound.com/overclocked/2024/12/17/daddy-daughter-podcast-2024/ This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. How to get Pluralistic: Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): Pluralistic.net Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://pluralistic.net/plura-list Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection): https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic Medium (no ads, paywalled): https://doctorow.medium.com/ Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://twitter.com/doctorow Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising): https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic "When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
094
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/c...
project-syndicate.org
Crypto’s Unholy Choir | by Andrés Velasco - Project Syndicate
Andrés Velasco hears a chorus of deceivers, demagogues, dictators, and tax dodgers singing Donald Trump’s praises.
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 02/01/2025
open.substack.com/pub/paulkrug...
open.substack.com
America’s Forgotten Generation (of Prosperity)
How and why the postwar boom got memory-holed
000
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
Excessive concern for efficiency is the enemy of innovation. See my book Doing Capitalism www.billjaneway.com/inside-the-b...
billjaneway.com
Inside the Book — Bill Janeway
010
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 29/12/2024
www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Elon Musk Needs to Teach Our Government How to Lose More Money
A better industrial policy for the United States involves more risk taking, not less.
000
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 27/12/2024
Wall St. Is Minting Easy Money From Risky Loans. What Could Go Wrong? www.nytimes.com/2024/12/27/b...
nytimes.com
Wall St. Is Minting Easy Money From Risky Loans. What Could Go Wrong?
Everyone from Jamie Dimon to the International Monetary Fund is ringing alarms about the shadowy world of private credit. But the money keeps rolling in.
43617
Reposted by Bill Janeway
glgerstle.bsky.social @glgerstle.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
My debut post on bsky! Very excited to be organizing this conference with @maggor.bsky.social. Check out panels and speakers on our webpage, beyond-neoliberalism.org; further details, including how to register, coming in January.
beyond-neoliberalism.org
Beyond Neoliberalism Conference
095
Bill Janeway @050343.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
What Is To Be Done? Investing Where It Matters. open.substack.com/pub/fallows/...
open.substack.com
What Is To Be Done? Investing Where It Matters.
Something has started. Let's keep it going.
010
Reposted by Bill Janeway
venki @venki.dev · 04/12/2024
Great piece! Compelling framing of the beliefs of {tech, DC, voters} generally shifting in ways that just made tech & democrats less aligned
187
Reposted by Bill Janeway
Morgan J Freeman @mjfree.bsky.social · 21/11/2024
I'm going to post this video every day so we never forget
18644489910144