Mike @ Misaligned Markets

California native, chronic night owl, and writer managing a whole mess of personal projects (plus a sprawling homelab). Currently building https://misaligned.markets to discuss modern political economy. Previously ran a blog called Philosimplicity.

Blog: https://misaligned.markets/
How the AI bubble will pop: https://misaligned.markets/what-to-expect-ai-bubble/
Latest post: https://misaligned.markets/gtr-internet-history-governance/

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Last Notes

2026-03-03 02:00:07 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116130981856473314
Policy in market capitalism is a matter of governance, not optimization or engineering which is how economists have been treating it.
#note1lmr…7luk

2026-02-20 19:48:05 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116097754090447763
(1/6) Absolutely love how @npub1fdr…lvhs finds time for a huge lesson in a celebratory anniversary post (congrats, btw).
We make tech good by "liberating [it] from its monstrous forebears."
This evokes the spirit of Karl Polanyi's double movement. When I started my own blog a year ago, one of the questions that drove me was: How do externalities happen, and how can we prevent them? And I kept coming back to this idea.
https://misaligned.markets/glossary/#double-movement
#note1pnr…m5h0

2026-02-10 19:36:09 UTC

RE: https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/116046419430463041
This is an excellent idea. Unfortunately I don’t think the Dems realize they’re the opposition party in an authoritarian regime. They are instead normalizing backsliding. Doesn’t mean that the public can’t do this!
#note1ee3…0cyc

2026-02-04 19:11:27 UTC

Chrematistics or accumulation without limit was the most important concept I ever learned about. It's not #greed per se, it's something much worse and it dominates our world. #capitalism #philosophy #misalignedmarkets #poliecon
https://medium.com/@misaligned-markets/greed-is-not-selfishness-0474653eba10

2026-01-27 19:14:39 UTC

(1/3) I learned a lot through blogging last year, as writing is a form of reflection. In this blog post I speedrun some of the more interesting topics I discussed. Mainly two ideas that illustrate how capitalism creates “attack surfaces” in market economies.
https://misaligned.markets/one-year-of-misaligned-markets/
#cybersecurity #capitalism #economics #politicaleconomy #philosophy #infosec #misalignedmarkets
A short #thread 🧵:

2025-10-22 18:15:03 UTC

Genuinely miss #philosophy #twitter circa 2017-2019. Don't think I've ever experienced a #socialmedia community like it. Was hoping to find some semblance of it on #mastodon, but I've been here for almost a year, and it still feels kind of feels like I'm screaming into a void.
Been following lots of people here, joining conversations where it makes sense, but feels very ad hoc and kind of like I'm intruding in some cases. Idk if this is just what it's like here or if I'm overthinking things.

2025-09-04 18:34:08 UTC

8 years ago on this day, my 26th birthday, I launched my first blog, Philosimplicity. I was engaged in self-study and wanted to share what I was learning w/ the world.
I'm pretty sure regular readership never exceeded a few dozen, but it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
Even as my output slowed, the blog allowed me to interact with academics and people passionate about learning. Here's to hoping Misaligned Markets does the same!
#blogging #writing #philosophy #learning

2025-08-28 02:53:04 UTC

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Thank @npub1fdr…lvhs. He's brought up the term multiple times. I think he got it from David Graeber and David Wengrow (Dawn of Everything).
It's an extremely relevant term to describe some of the driver of not just our politics but cultural evolution. https://doctorow.medium.com/schizmogenesis-755bbb6a8515

2025-08-27 19:17:46 UTC

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@npub1388…sxrr
Consolidating all ML/DL to AI is definitely gimmick to pass off LLMs as huge slabs of raw intelligence that can serve as everything machines. But I’ve been disappointed with some of the critical discourse around AI, which feels like schismogenesis.
Yes tech is not neutral. And the abuse used to create and promote “AI” sucks. But shaming people who find use for any ML tech (even LLMs) isn’t useful. Pushing for regulation, education, nudging people to alternatives matter.

2025-08-27 00:52:42 UTC

#QT (1/3) Love this part of @npub1fdr…lvhs's newest post. Property rights, especially as they're practiced and enforced in the US, are in tension with “free markets.” This is why the growth of capitalism has increased the power of “private governments” (corporations) that weaponize the law to deprive us of ownership or enshittify necessities like healthcare.
https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/115096695125924580

2025-08-19 19:26:11 UTC

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The story of market capitalism, at least in the US, is one of our inability to learn how to constrain competition to just the economic sphere.
Market actors operate in the world, left to their own devices they will learn how to leverage anything and everything to block economic competition.

2025-07-31 19:08:11 UTC

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#Enshittification is enclosure by a new name. Capitalists have always used the structure of capitalism to avoid market competition because capitalism and markets are sometimes at odds.
I've created four "paradoxes" to describe how market capitalism undermines itself:
1. Property rights limit competition
2. Property rights enforcement invites exploitation
3. Markets reward secrecy but need transparency to function well
4. Market success undermines market competition

2025-07-29 18:46:59 UTC

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This is impressive. I got into blogging this year for a similar reason and have written (to my astonishment) 20k+ words, but can't yet imagine going deeper and expanding my output.
Even if blogging or writing in general lets us cognitively offload, being able to more deeply shape and massage ideas in the way you do is a highly active process. The ability to write multiple books per year probably comes down to something more fundamental than just blogging.

2025-07-24 21:51:14 UTC

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(3/6) VCs love Thiel's thesis because they believe the "landlord of x" business model to be superior (e.g. Uber is a landlord of drivers, AirBnB is a landlord of landlords). Guaranteed rents from building a web app? Who could turn that down?
But as @npub1fdr…lvhs has pointed out, the unit economics for many of these businesses stink to high hell. Profit can only come from capturing and then squeezing the shit out of a captive audience. Sound familiar?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/slang/enshittification

2025-07-24 21:51:14 UTC

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(2/6) As Peter Thiel tells us, "competition is for losers." The goal is to capture value (create rents) by becoming too big to ignore and shaping the world around you.
This idea is the new "companies only exist to maximize shareholder value" of our time. It's horrendous and actually ensures companies provide little value to society. More people need to point this out. Silicon Valley has been open about their business model and is celebrated for it.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-thiel-competition-is-for-losers-1410535536

2025-07-24 21:51:13 UTC

(1/6) I'm aware this account is just a @npub1fdr…lvhs fan club at this point, but it's okay! This post gets at the heart of why we've stopped building good things. We're rewarding capitalists who cosplay as innovators.
Many of the advancements of yesteryear (TCP/IP, GPS) were the result of public research leading to commoditized developments that anyone could use or build on.
But capitalists don't commoditize or take the long bets needed for such developments to pay off.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/24/geometry-hates-cars/

2025-07-24 20:19:13 UTC

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It's not just him, the modern business thesis of our time is "competition is for losers" à la Thiel. The goal for investors is to be a king of some tiny but “indispensable” fiefdom.
Today's capitalists are trying to cosplay the US Government of yesteryear which delivered readily commoditized technologies (TCP/IP, GPS) for cheap. So they say things that sound science-y. People (economists included) assume it doesn't matter where "innovation" comes from and spend + pray.

2025-07-18 17:51:25 UTC

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I genuinely tried my hand at identifying factions early on but I think some shifting has occurred.
I also seem to have undercounted the degree to which Heritage itself was a coalition and how much power Trump would have in forcing the Tarrifs. https://zirk.us/@MidniteMikeWrites/113958614715483253

2025-07-15 21:57:26 UTC

This @npub1fdr…lvhs post was a banger too, but mostly because I've never heard of Kagi. Don't know what rock I've been under, lol. https://mamot.fr/@pluralistic/114858962373543708

2025-07-14 20:55:48 UTC

(1/2) Genuinely the most thought-provoking thing I've read from @npub1fdr…lvhs who regularly blows my mind, so this is saying a lot.
I naively thought of FOSS as building a "commons." A functional alternative to property-expansionism. Not that I knew there weren't exceptions, but I never fully appreciated the existing tensions because...well FOSS seems like a commons.
But how and why you build something is as important as what you build. That's what determines function.
https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/14/pole-star/

2025-07-14 20:22:50 UTC

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Language has always been a battleground of essentially contested concepts. I don't think that's a reason to avoid labels, even in a world eager to mislabel you.
Anyway, I think this movement is a huge tent of other existing ones. People working to expand democracy/dignity across economic, social, and political dimensions. Not sure one term is desirable for this, but maybe we should recognize we're addressing the same problem from different angles.

2025-07-11 03:35:20 UTC

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This is true, but a lot of companies have begun changing their business models to cater to wealther consumers.
Home builders prioritize building luxury apartments and condos over regular ones. The game industry now agressively prioritizes live services where the functionality is designed to appeal to whales. Often alienating their user base to do so.
This isn't universal, but some compnies seem to be adapting to inequality by just pricing out poor consumers.

2025-07-10 21:50:11 UTC

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on the off chance that we’re on the verge of the AI apocalypse/rapture… well apparently the economy (US) increasingly doesn’t need us. The top 10% of wealthiest Americans make up half the spending.
https://www.warc.com/content/feed/top-10-of-wealthy-americans-drive-50-of-us-spending/en-GB/10380

2025-07-10 21:43:55 UTC

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@npub1cqh…a0wq I suspect the robots aren’t good enough in important domains to replace workers entirely. The goal is to discipline labor and put downward pressure on average wages.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvm1dyp9v2o

2025-07-10 20:10:02 UTC

I somehow have accidently stumbled onto information theory in my quest to understand capitalism. More reading to do!
#capitalism #philosophy

2025-07-10 18:15:05 UTC

I feel old asking this, but are online #bookclubs/social groups a thing? Especially for #politics, #economics, or #philosophy? I'm sure there are, but have no idea where to begin looking for this. I partly started my blog for this reason, but I know it'll take a while to build this. In the meantime would love to talk about what I'm reading or find new books.

2025-06-02 16:49:39 UTC

Starting a new blog series on #capitalism but might be biting off more than I can chew which is why my next blog posts are taking so long. I’m optimistic they’re going to be good, though. In the mean time check out the seven posts I’ve published since I started writing this year.
https://misaligned.markets
#blogging #politicaleconomy #economics #philosophy

2025-04-01 19:18:10 UTC

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[@alberto_cottica](https://mastodon.green/@alberto_cottica ) @npub1fdr…lvhs
Yes. People like Hayek were right about markets being information engines, but wrong about the contents of that information. Because market capitalism serves to maximize profits companies function by creating ignorance about costs & products so premiums can be charged. Rather than explicitly solve distribution problems, markets under capitalism “solve” for exploiting (and creating) information asymmetry.
https://misaligned.markets/corponomics-lethal-econ-kung-fu/

2025-03-31 17:01:18 UTC

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But capitalists have spent the last century pretending governments expand property rights for ideological reasons. And the only way to combat this is supposedly reducing all government including the welfare state.
I suppose I’m being a bit unfair, but it feels like this is the level of analysis some views deserve, given the failures to grapple with the limitations of market capitalism as we’ve experienced them multiple times in the last century.

2025-03-31 16:55:58 UTC

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Capitalism’s “attack surface” has always included the legal infrastructure underpinning both markets and property rights. It would be foolish for profit maximizers to ignore. The history of land enclosure and slavery illustrates this well. In a democracy where property owners are represented (or representatives themselves) they will always use this power and use their wealth increase their leverage.

2025-03-21 21:28:34 UTC

My blog, misaligned markets is named so because market capitalism has caused markets to become misaligned from the purpose they're supposed to serve. But what is misalignment?
Read about Aristotle's great insight about greed and how it applies to everything from money to climate change.
https://misaligned.markets/mammon-as-maloptimization/
#blog #philosophy #markets #capitalism

2025-03-19 07:04:25 UTC

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I agree with you. But in encountering ideas like “Competiton is for losers” (Theil’s book zero to one) these people literally seem to see the failure to seize value for them selves (even the very positive value they benefit from) as a tragedy. Tech is a good example as AI is enshittifying the very commons it relies on for fresh data.
I don’t know if it’s hubris, self-delusion, or willful ignorance and reckless sociopathic disregard that they’re this shortsighted.

2025-03-19 06:56:16 UTC

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they understand that the market rewards information asymmetry very well. The perception of doing something important and convincing people it is. Lots of portions of our economy resemble this. https://misaligned.markets/corponomics-lethal-econ-kung-fu/

2025-03-18 21:21:24 UTC

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they care about the economy in so far as they want to capture all of its value for themselves. Anything with positive externalities doesn’t produce direct value for them and their friends.

2025-03-18 17:57:37 UTC

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Musk makes more sense when you learn he cares about the appearance of doing something important. That’s why he attaches himself to existing companies or in the case of Neuralink, Solar City, and Boring he takes experimental technology not suited for industry and pretends to be pushing the field forwards.
Our media environment and educational system is woefully inadequate to help people understand this. At least in the US.

2025-03-14 20:07:36 UTC

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Well there's always self-hosted "smart" systems anyway. You can use a cheap single board computer to run most of these features. No enshittification required.

2025-03-14 10:00:41 UTC

After #COVID I learned about systems thinking, and it shaped my approach to thinking about the #economy. I wrote a blog post to talk about an important concept: Goal displacement, which happens when we build systems that indefinitely maximize for abstract goals like efficiency, over long time horizons.
#philosophy #ethics #capitalism
https://misaligned.markets/mammon-as-maloptimization/

2025-03-08 03:48:37 UTC

Absolutely love @npub18hc…2l55! It's got a gorgeous UI, great quality of life features like clear threading and the ability to choose how you engage with threads. And lots of other small but nice to have features.
#mastodon #mastodonapp #ios

2025-02-26 08:29:49 UTC

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Ajay Singh Chaudhary's post in The Baffler, We're Not in This Together, is a pretty sober illustration of this. It's about climate politics but all the same, it's a straightforward illustration of how people can rationalize how to profit off delaying what should be a common good.
https://thebaffler.com/salvos/were-not-in-this-together-chaudhary

2025-02-09 23:37:30 UTC

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I'm a bit of a pessimist, but one thing I'm hopeful for is that democratic crises might encourage experimentation of various forms of local governance.
I know this in and of itself isn't inherently good (it's also kind of scary), but it could be if we lay the groundwork for good experiments.
As much of a pessimist as I am, I do take seriously using what little power I have to try to nudge this ship in a slightly better direction.

2025-02-07 06:00:43 UTC

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It's sad that people don't know what these words mean. The world's largest government contractor seizing his employer's purse when no one is looking is not transparent or efficient. If this wasn't a business venture, why didn't he divest himself of his conflicts of interest?

2025-02-04 05:38:03 UTC

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I think his intention with the tarrifs was always misdirection. He asked for consolations that Mexico and Canada were already doing, all so he can go back to his base and declare victory. They'll probably eat it up, but these are indeed the actions of a small man.

2024-11-22 23:42:07 UTC

I'm looking for an #editor for my political philosophy blog. I mostly want line editing but could probably benefit from some developmental editing.
I'm not an academic, though, I'm not exactly sure of where to look for this.
#academia #philosophy #editing