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Steve Randy Waldman

@interfluidity.com
12K followers 15K following 10K posts

drafts.interfluidity.com www.interfluidity.com tech.interfluidity.com zirk.us/@interfluidity

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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 2h
(How? Do you think states can fine-tune market power, allow firms just enough to cover fixed costs, but not enough to become extractive? Do you think that withstands politicians' and the public's information disadvantages when they lobby for more market power? Historically, how good are we at that?)
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 2h
(i'd love to know what you think!)
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 2h
this is a real problem, but cartel is a bad solution, for very obvious reasons. (it is the main solution we currently use in Western economies, which explains why our economies have turned extractive rentier, 'cuz there's no limiting principle to cartel.) can i interest you in a better solution?
drafts.interfluidity.com
Income driven repayment of fixed capital
drafts @ interfluidity
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James Umbanhowar @jumbanho.bsky.social · 21h
Spain->Spsin
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 21h
we'll see what Google Maps has to say.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 22h
jfc.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 22h
we need a whole portfolio of often modest things that add up to a big bias, that make massive accumulations better to transfer, difficult and disadvantaged to keep.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Yup. Lots of things will have to happen. Thousand mile journey begins with one step. If you think we should also jail and fine Musk (e.g. for negligent homicide of hundreds of thousands while unlawfully destroying an agency), I’m with you on that too.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Yeah, you didn’t even read the thread apparently.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Wealth taxes are one piece of a broad range of policies that can, over time, eliminate absurdly large personal fortunes. If you want to concede the infeasibility of desirable changes just because they seem hard, that is certainly your prerogative. It’s not the road I’d choose.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
My preference is to be very explicit that consumption taxes create fiscal space for universal benefits while income and wealth taxes are about shaping the wealth distribution. drafts.interfluidity.com/2026/05/03/t...
drafts.interfluidity.com
The $200,000 standard deduction
drafts @ interfluidity
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Yes. Lots of people pretend or misunderstand, argue you can finance a social democracy just by taxing the rich. They are mistaken.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
* "that will be lethal if not treated" grrr.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
That will require lots of incremental policy shift, including, very notably, progressive wealth taxes.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
That doesn't mean the proposal is to just take all the money at once. The goal is to create a tax system that encourages the rich to disperse their own money, and that means at ever higher levels of wealth it becomes ever more futile to try to accumulate more.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Yes, it's true, we want a world in which no households holds wealth of more than $100M. That's about the limit of wealth-level dispersion we can tolerate and still constitute a shared society.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
I'll simply suggest that one is gentler, fairer, more incremental, less disruptive, and therefore more politically possible (absent undesirable reigns of terror) than the other.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Cummins-Smith resorts to argument by superficial analogy to argue that, well, if we can't imprison the rich, how do you suppose we'll tax them?
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Musk is not an aberration. He is just the most visible symptom of a morbidity that will be lethal is treated.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
The resolution of the financial crisis was as great an injustice as anything Elon Musk ever did.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
I'm all for jailing the rich who misbehave. But long before we had Elon Musk to jail, and still today, democracy is eviscerated in the United States by all of the forms of bribery we have explicitly legalized.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
Where, eventually, it acknowledges taking the money from the rich is the point, because money is power and there is only so great a power differential we can tolerate and still constitute anything like a democracy, the piece says we should just jail the rich who misbehave.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
I'm a huge @liberalcurrents.com fan, but not at all a fan of this piece by Cameron Cummins-Smith. For most of the piece it argues against strawmen, missing the point of wealth taxes — which is not, not at all, to "raise revenue". www.liberalcurrents.com/tax-the-weal...
liberalcurrents.com
Tax the Wealthy, Not Wealth
Don’t miss the forest for the tallest trees.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
yes, definitely. keeping the two party oligopoly without any means by which the public can challenge party insiders' selection of candidates would render "democracy" pretty thin. even thinner than it is under the current, very destructive, primary system.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
expected geometric average of short-term rates, or that catch-all rascal term premium. what say you?
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
The House of Representatives should be elected by proportional representation. The President and Senate by approval voting. There should be no formal primary system, parties should be allowed to choose their nominees as they see fit.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 29/09/2026
why is there so much journalism about the buoyancy of tension?
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Alastair Meeks @alastairmeeks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
This is something that we have forgotten that previous governments in many states worked very hard at. The United Kingdom was a government-led identity. Italy was a government-led identity (before reunification, only c2% spoke standard Italian as their primary language).
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Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos.com · 29/09/2026
'Founder' this word they worship turns out to be more like the nautical kind
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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Maybe the reason the economic vibes are so off isn't that things are *worse* than the great recession but because back then we all thought the pain was temporary, whereas the things that are wrong with the economy today have all been getting worse for a long time and show no signs of improving
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Burnham aiming for a change to the UK’s voting system.
theguardian.com
Andy Burnham expected to say he will push ahead with electoral reform plans
Exclusive: Labour conference speech will kick off process that could replace current system with proportional representation
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The teleology of AI boosterism is that orgs *want* the efficiency. What if the efficiency increases costs instead of lowering them? Still a revolution, I wonder?
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Amy Hoy @amyhoy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
so sick of Chosen One-ification of everything narcissist ass worldview
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 28/09/2026
the Gaius Baltar character in Battlestar Galactica (take 2) was so prescient.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 28/09/2026
sometimes when you think you are making progress, you are making a fool of yourself. and hopefully vice versa.
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Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
The most useless form of news is “CEO says.” Can this tool actually do what it says or is the company just trying to profit off fear?
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Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
NEW from me: Over the last 4 years, America has lost more than 200k jobs in creative fields like publishing, film, TV, or graphic design. It's the worst stretch for arts jobs outside of recessions. How much is AI to blame? And can the arts' business model survive?🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/ai-and-the...
apricitas.io
AI and the Fall? of the Creative Class
America is Losing Hundreds of Thousands of Jobs in Media, Film & the Arts. How Much is AI to Blame?
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Daily Chartbook @dailychartbook.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Baby Boomers currently account for 53.0% of total US household net worth. Together with the Silent Generation, they account for 64.0% of household net worth." -Yardeni
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 27/09/2026
toward the governor module…
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 27/09/2026
if civilization can wane, we can only hope it can wax as well.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 27/09/2026
hmm…
Text:

Top read
On English Wikipedia

Lizzie Borden
American woman acquitted of mur...

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American domestic terrorist (1942...

Roblox
Multiplayer game creation platform
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niraliberalism @niral.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
What transhumanists want to do with computers, advancing the species by melding with machine, gerbils did long ago with hang gliders.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
sure! on that we’re agreed. the stock market is rigged to go up, it’s an essential part of US political economy and the object of tons of tacit state action.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
but financial assets doing well, in its straightforward, first order effect, means an extremely concentrated wealth distribution receives cash flows from a much more dispersed, much less wealthy population of payers.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
and you can argue, a bit handwavingly, that in dynamic terms the arithmetic misses growth and technology engendered by the obviously-rigged-against-most snapshot-in-time game.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
if financial assets were more equitably distributed, that might change the equation.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
as a matter of simple arithmetic it is a game most people lose.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
it is a game that distributed rewards overwhelmingly to the already wealthiest units (households, individuals, whatever) based on cash flows generated lopsidedly but much much much less lopsidedly than ownership.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
the vast, vast majority of Americans lose more to profits than they will ever gain from stocks.
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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/09/2026
“households” is itself a rigging, a much smaller share of people have even token exposure, and the capitalized future expenses of all the people in a moment-in-time household renders the exposure even more trivial.
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