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Austin Hayden Smidt

@austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social
119 followers 328 following 66 posts

Political economist, social theorist, and economic philosopher. Money, finance, critical macro, media, subjectivity, and institutional change. Financier/Producer/Consultant. Money, time, liquidity, power.

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Reposted by Austin Hayden Smidt
William Clare Roberts 🇵🇸 @marxinhell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
This is the punchline, but the whole thread is something I endorse 110%
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Some big love for our flick PLACE TO BE after its Venice premiere! It'll be released soon... :)
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Got a cheeky little review of @jwmason.bsky.social and Arjun Jayadev's AGAINST MONEY out with Finance and Society. As I conclude in the review, "what Mason and Jayadev give us is something preliminary and useful: an instruction in how not to be bewitched." www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Money: The veil we put on ourselves - J.W. Masonand Arjun Jayadev , Against Money, University of Chicago Press, 2026 | Finance and Society | Cambridge Core
Money: The veil we put on ourselves - J.W. Masonand Arjun Jayadev , Against Money, University of Chicago Press, 2026
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Lovely review for PLACE TO BE. Bummed I couldn’t be in Venice with the rest of the producing/EP team to celebrate the premiere, but stoked to see the film getting some early love. deadline.com/2026/09/plac...
deadline.com
'Place To Be' Review: Ellen Burstyn & Taika Waititi In Road Trip Movie
A review of 'Place To Be' a film from Kornél Mundruczó focusing on the journey Ellen Burstyn takes with Taika Waititi to return a pigeon to its owner.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Sartre scholars, political theorists, political economists, political ecologists – new volume coming out! www.routledge.com/Sartre-and-C...
routledge.com
Sartre and Contemporary Political Theory: The Later Sartre and the Challenges of the Present
Does Jean-Paul Sartre's political theory have anything to offer to us today? Are Sartre's ways of reflecting on ethics, praxis, society and political philosophy in terms of hope for a better world, a ...
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Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski.com · 27/07/2026
I have a new article where I outline a materialist analysis of the machine learning value chain via three interrelated concepts that are all key for understanding this political economy: innovation realism, cheap data, and the perpetual value machine. Preprint here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Title: Deconstructing the Machine Learning Value Chain

Author: Jathan Sadowski

Abstract: This essay offers a materialist analysis of machine learning in the form of a critical intervention that deconstructs the value chain of this technological paradigm. It is structured around three interrelated concepts that provide a deeper understanding of the political economy of machine learning. First is innovation realism: the idea that venture capital is the best or only way to support innovation, and alternative approaches are inferior or impossible. Second is cheap data: the structural contradiction that, despite data being the most essential part of technological capitalism, it is also the most undervalued and taken for granted. Third is the perpetual value machine: the pursuit by capital to create technologies that capture an infinite amount of surplus value without needing to rely on any additional human labor to produce that value.
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John Quiggin @johnquiggin.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
We don't need massive data centres, and gas-fired power plants, to manage the use of LLMs as a replacement for Google. Hyperscaling is a destructive waste of resources,
act.350.org.au
Protect Our Water: Say No to New Data Centre Near Darwin
Beetaloo Energy are proposing a massive $40bn data centre on our Country. The NT government has promised 185 hectares of stolen Larrakia land for a gas-fired power station and data centre that...
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Yeah. They're taught that Catholicism is *essentially* an idolatrous religion (Mary/Saint worship etc). I remember an Evangelical street preacher in LA used to love to rile up passersby at 3rd Street Promenade by yelling about how Mother Theresa was burning in hell cause she worshiped Mary. Wild.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Postmodern Economics by Angus Armstrong @projectsyndicate.bsky.social prosyn.org/L1PSNKn
prosyn.org
Postmodern Economics
Angus Armstrong applies the late English artist’s appreciation for the unknowability of reality to the dismal science.
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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 02/07/2026
#OpenAccess from the new issue of @polanalysis.bsky.social - Nationally Representative, Locally Misaligned: The Biases of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Neighborhood Perception - cup.org/3Kw6VkD - Paige Bollen, @joehigton.bsky.social & @msands.bsky.social
Political Analysis abstract discussing the use of large language models (LLMs) like Political Domain Enhanced BERT-based Algorithm for Textual Entailment (DEBATE). Highlights their efficiency in annotating documents without supervision and performing zero-shot classification.
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Residents in Sydney’s lower north shore fear being swamped by data centre tsunami www.afr.com/property/res...
afr.com
Residents in Sydney’s lower north shore fear being swamped by data centre tsunami
A cluster of data centres is planned for a suburb in Sydney’s north and its residents have broken a record in their resistance.
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Centre for Future Work @futurework.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Following our April symposium on AI and decent work, we've published insights from our speakers – a diverse group of researchers, unionists, and advocates who came together to examine Australia's options for AI regulation in the workplace. futurework.org.au/news/which-w...
futurework.org.au
Which Way Forward? AI and Decent Work symposium insights – Centre for Future work
Insights from the presenters at our recent symposium examining the impact of AI adoption in the world of work.
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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 25/06/2026
#OpenAccess from @ejprjournal.bsky.social - ‘Left behind’ and an undemocratic mind? The link between perceived marginalization and democratic orientations - cup.org/3Svhicc - @vanessaschwaiger.bsky.social #FirstView
Logo for the European Journal of Political Research displaying the text "EJPR European Journal of Political Research" in cream letters on a blue background, accompanied by the hashtag "#OpenAccess".
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Pete Wolfendale @deontologistics.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
This interview with me and Tom Moynihan on the concepts of extinction, ecological risk, and cosmological value is finally up online. Easily one of my favourite bits of thinking/speaking/writing I've done in the last year: tank.tv/magazine/iss...
tank.tv
The sense of an ending Thomas Moynihan and Peter Wolfendale — TANKtv
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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
The age of the median voter is now 52. In primaries, 65. The most common age of donors in recent elections is 70. "The oldest voters ordain the choices for the rest of us." How America became a gerontocracy in which the aged hoard power and wealth: www.newyorker.com/culture/open...
newyorker.com
Do Older Americans Have Too Much Power?
In “Gerontocracy in America,” the historian Samuel Moyn argues that the central conflict of our era is between the young and the elderly.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
"the cause of business cycles is not a few large things that can be measured and controlled, but many small things that are difficult to measure and essentially impossible to control" – Fischer Black
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The Nation Magazine @thenation.com · 24/06/2026
From the dot-com bubble to the housing crash, Greenspan’s fingerprints are all over the economic crises that reshaped America. bit.ly/4oJbp7t
bit.ly
Requiem for Alan Greenspan the Bubble Master
Greenspan enthusiastically promoted the deregulation that characterized the era of high neoliberalism.
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Michael Burns @michaelburns.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
come hang out on saturday and listen to artists and comedians and video creators talk about how we can stay human in the algorithmic age and then connect with humans, drink drinks, and listen to incredible music. events.ticketleap.com/tickets/hype...
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Royce Kurmelovs @roycerk2.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
"Evidence suggests that AI-driven ‘deskilling’ is starting to happen in medicine, computer science and other fields. Researchers are now discussing how to preserve important human expertise in the age of AI."
nature.com
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Alex Callinicos @alexcallinicos.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
www.ft.com/content/dec7... Labour MPs fear they will lose their seats if Starmer remains in Number 10
ft.com
Labour MPs fear they will lose their seats if Starmer remains in Number 10
Prime minister’s support in the parliamentary party is ebbing away
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Reposted by Austin Hayden Smidt
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa @benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Whether a movie is good or bad should be the beginning not the end of any conversation about it. It's also the least interesting question to ask about a movie.
Brave man meme
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Part 2 is up The Rate-Form, Part 2: Liquidity Is a Refusal open.substack.com/pub/thewaili...
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Nate Holdren @nhold.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
I've read two of these and they're great, I'm excited to read the rest. You should also read these.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Apparently an electronic MOU has been e-signed to end hostilities between the US and Iran. Obviously it's a huge step if this holds. But, as a nerd who thinks too deeply about things, is it not also a strange world we're in that a hot war can end the same way one would e-sign for an apartment lease?
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Economy & Society @econsocjournal.bsky.social · 14/06/2026
Now available in Latest Articles, @robertdorschel.bsky.social on the class relations and entrepreneurialism of digital capitalism www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
The entrepreneurial gaze of digital capitalism
Scholars have unearthed how tech companies exert unprecedented power through new modes of accumulation and control. Less attention has been paid to the social actors who command these companies. In...
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Reposted by Austin Hayden Smidt
Philipp Golka @pgolka.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
Second paper from our #assetstruggles SI now online: @hadoose.bsky.social makes the crucial point that asset struggles over climate governance not only include climate vulnerable & climate forcing assets – but that climate policy itself often takes an asset form, reconfiguring power. Check it out!
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Joseph E. Stiglitz @josephestiglitz.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
Growth has failed to eradicate poverty or to promote wellbeing. Poverty is not inevitable. It is manufactured. Our op-ed with @deschuttero.bsky.social @jayatighosh.bsky.social @thomaspiketty.bsky.social @kateraworth.bsky.social @jasonhickel.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
We economists have done the maths: ‘growth’ is a doomed strategy – there is a better way | Olivier De Schutter and others
Our roadmap has been shaped by experts across the world. We call on political leaders at all levels to use it, says Olivier De Schutter and others
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Branko Milanovic @brankomilan.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
The mother of all inequality disputes. (All data are in PPPs and on per capita basis; all measures are in Ginis.) Unweighted international inequality (aka Concept 1 ineq) is inequality of all countries' GDPs per capita (as simple as that). It has been going down, but slowly, over the past 30y,
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Current Affairs @currentaffairs.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
In director Curry Barker’s hit indie horror film, we can see the fundamental ghastliness of consumer society. www.currentaffairs.org/news/obsessi...
currentaffairs.org
“Obsession” and the Horror of Treating People Like Products
In director Curry Barker’s hit indie horror film, we can see the fundamental ghastliness of consumer society.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
I will never not be appalled that a putative rational monetary strategy is to hope for – not merely anticipate, but hope for – a bubble burst so it causes job losses to ease inflationary pressures. It's a sign of a truly broken ethical compass that such a view is in the macro engine room at all.
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Matías Vernengo @nakedkeynes.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
My discussion of the relation between neoliberalism, classical liberalism and neoliberalism. Builds on an old debate with Philip Mirowski nakedkeynesianism.substack.com/p/neoliberal...
nakedkeynesianism.substack.com
Neoliberalism, Classical Liberalism and Neoclassical Economics
Between Classical Rhetoric and Neoclassical Theory
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Will forever be remembered as being name dropped in *the* famous Good Will Hunting scene
static.klipy.com
Matt Damon: How Do You Like Them Apples?
ALT: Matt Damon: How Do You Like Them Apples?
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LPE Blog @lpeblog.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
Today, Evan Behrle examines one of the oldest arguments for income inequality: that workers should be paid the value of their productive contribution. What this argument misses, he argues, is that the size of any worker’s contribution is largely determined by what other workers do.
lpeproject.org
You Didn’t Earn That
When defending income inequality, high-earners often appeal to an old left-wing idea: that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labor and should be paid the value of their productive…
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Andrew Leyshon @andrewleyshon.bsky.social · 27/05/2026
It’s alive! Copies of @fintechcapital.bsky.social, by @paullangley.bsky.social and me, published by @princetonupress.bsky.social arrived this morning. Out in the US soon, and in the UK a little later.
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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 07/06/2026
NEW ISSUE from @iojournal.bsky.social - International Organization - Volume 80 - Issue 2 - Spring 2026 - cup.org/3PKmata
Icon with large letters "IO" and the text "New Issue" below on a dark teal background.
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Brett Christophers @brettchristophers.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Frustrating that Tooze still hasn't twigged: If subsidies aren't robust enough, you still can't make reliable profits in solar and wind power generation, no matter how cheap the panels are.
ft.com
Wasting China’s solar panel surplus is madness
Clean power is within our reach — yet factories sit idle
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David Weiskopf believes in you @dave.bzky.team · 06/06/2026
I love this concept bc either: - big parking lot gets solar - big parking lot stays small to avoid solar Either way, it's some type of win.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
Gonna do a little series on interest and why I think econ needs to be okay with getting into the weeds of the metaphysics of time. It's more than philosophical navel gazing. It gets to the root of financial power. The Rate-Form, Part 1: Against the Price of Time open.substack.com/pub/thewaili...
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The Baffler @thebaffler.com · 05/06/2026
“Television has been described as a narcotizing device and a machine for education, a propaganda font and an instrument of democratization, the ‘idiot box’ and the medium which disseminated some of the great art of this and the previous centuries.”
thebaffler.com
America on the Screen | Ed Simon
The television as not just an invention, but indeed is only matched in the United States by the automobile as a perspective, ideology, and lifestyle.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
What stands out most to me is that fairly mundane policy proposals, from an historical perspective (eg taxes on the rich), are paternalistically hand-waved away as "zany" and "fringe," and pitched as demands for "handouts" rather than considered and measured proposals. It's profound disrespect.
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Los Angeles Review of Books @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"We need the intellectual and imaginative resources to work out how best to live together without appealing to political ideologies." Matthew Lamb on finding gems in Camus's translated notebooks: lareviewofbooks.org/article/albert-…
lareviewofbooks.org
Fame! A Misunderstanding | Los Angeles Review of Books
Albert Camus has long been misunderstood, but a new translation of his complete notebooks offers a corrective.
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
You cannot talk to a power politician As if he were a wise man. If he seeks to understand you, If he looks inside himself To find the truth you have told him, He cannot find it there. Not finding, he doubts. When a man doubts, He will kill. – Zhuangzi
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Austin Hayden Smidt @austinhaydensmidt.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"I'm sure this'll be received with patience & thorough analysis" *reads comments* "Ffs this is why I deleted my socials a few years back" Fwiw, it's obvs a mixed bag. He's proposing a type of digital Georgism here, which I'm into. But it'll also enmesh AI further and expose us to its market risk.
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TriCap @triforcecap.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Winfree wrote the Fed chapter of Project 2025. Reform menu waterfall: Full abolition of Fed, return to free banking, or Return to gold standard, or Eliminate employment mandate, or Transfer Fed authority to electeds.
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Timothy Snyder @timothysnyder.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
If Big Brother doesn’t like your science topic you won’t be funded and if Big Brother doesn’t like your results you will be defunded. A recipe for backwardness that seems to be designed by people who want America to humiliate itself and collapse. elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of...
elizabethginexi.substack.com
Summary of Key Changes in OMB’s Proposed Federal Financial Assistance Rule
Russell Vought is going to destroy American Science
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ipsr-risp.bsky.social @ipsr-risp.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Call for Editors IPSR/RISP @ipsr-risp.bsky.social is seeking its next editorial team for a four-year term starting January 1, 2027. Deadline: June 22, 2026 Brief: open.substack.com/pub/ipsrbrie... Full details: www.sisp.it/wp-content/u...
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Ilias Alami @iliasalami.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
New essay, written for the excellent @transitionsec.bsky.social Propelled by the climatic and hegemonic transitions, military-imperial forms of state capitalism are confiscating our collective right to a safe, green, tech-powered future. transitionsecurity.org/imperial-sta... @campolis.bsky.social
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Manuela Moschella @manuelamoschella.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
War → energy shock → inflation. This time: Iran. But we saw this already after Russia invaded Ukraine. Back then, the shock ignited some big debates on monetary autonomy and dollar dominance In a new paper w/@palmapolyak.bsky.social we go back to that moment. A short thread👇
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𝙰𝚛𝚊𝚜𝚑 𝙰𝚋𝚒𝚣𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚑 @abizadeh.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
In a brazen attack on academic freedom, The New School has fired multiple tenured faculty, including the prominent economist Sanjay Reddy in what smells like retribution for his criticisms of the admin’s financial mismanagement.
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