Steve Randy Waldman

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Last Notes

2026-08-12 20:19:42 UTC

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@nprofile…as6g @nprofile…39z2 it is similar to banks, whose risk also is born publicly! i think it’s very fruitful to think about what for functions of banks we want private sector incentives (eg credit allocation) and for what functions we don’t (management of payments and moderate-dollar “ordinary savings” in ways that effectively convert those sources into investments riskier than “ordinary savers” or payments-systems users mean to bear).

2026-08-12 11:48:11 UTC

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@nprofile…as6g @nprofile…39z2 regulation of insurance conpany investment is the standard answer here. but besides the aint-gonna-happen part, the question is what role is served by private business, if regulators are largely going to define the portfolios behind life insurance policies and the state is ultimately going to bear the risk? what is their role? more innovative marketing? new product definition? (do we want that? we’d surr want to regulate it i think!)

2026-08-12 10:50:38 UTC

i'd like some of my erstwhile neoliberal colleagues to explain why, if in 44 states shortfalls are ultimately paid for by tax payers, life insurance should remain a private for-profit industry rather than a service administered by the state? cf @nprofile…39z2 https://prospect.org/2026/08/03/ai-bailout-could-be-baked-into-bubble-private-equity-life-insurers-loans/

2026-08-04 03:04:33 UTC

hypothesis: there's an important cohort whom not only did the financial crisis fail to chasten, but instead emboldened. all you need is the levers of power, was the lesson. now they are extravagantly putting that to the test. we are along for the ride.

2026-08-02 22:24:15 UTC

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@nprofile…tzvj because it’s long and i didn’t want to split it into multiple posts.

2026-08-02 22:21:32 UTC

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@nprofile…tzvj try the alt text.

2026-08-02 17:46:16 UTC

This is excellent, by #JohannKurtz https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/young-adults-are-poor-despite-every
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/117/027/161/722/676/698/original/871e25e14f5f6577.png

2026-07-21 00:28:10 UTC

we really need devices that write standardized descriptions of the technical process between sensor and image and sign hashes of those combined with the image data. https://scicomm.xyz/@dantheclamman/116954518144682511

2026-07-14 11:41:28 UTC

two things can simultaneously be true: (1) contemporary AI is real and revolutionary technology; and (2) we are courting the greatest financial crisis in the history of humankind.

2026-07-11 14:07:23 UTC

Often we claim presidencies have very little influence over the economy, but under a more AI-cautious second Biden administration (not necessarily a more tech-friendly Harris administration), I suspect we would have a very profoundly different economy.

2026-07-09 00:16:44 UTC

someday i'd like to meet The People.
we might have a spirited conversation.

2026-07-08 13:41:42 UTC

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@nprofile…as6g @nprofile…xz5s But the US legislature is not representative. We don't see many Gingriches in multiparty democracies with proportional representation. The US Congress, at least under current electoral and political practices, does not really qualify as a representative body. It is an institution subject to capture that superficially takes the form of a representative body, that has become (in part due to Gingrich!) too captured and atrophied to accomplish anything at all.

2026-07-07 23:37:07 UTC

charismatic human beings are both seductive and unreliable. that's why we invent and rely upon institutions. we should leave a much, much smaller role for charismatic human beings in our politics. heads of state should be ceremonial.

2026-07-06 13:32:06 UTC

[new draft post] Why are Americans so unhappy? https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2026/07/06/why-are-americans-so-unhappy/index.html

2026-07-05 16:54:08 UTC

"If your website has a 'See more' link, I assume that indicates that the rest of the article or site is unimportant or uninteresting, so I basically never click on it. Why would I?" @nprofile…gus5 https://www.philipbrewer.net/2026/07/05/see-more-or-not-see-more/

2026-07-04 09:51:13 UTC

preliterate and postliterate are both varieties of illiterate.

2026-06-28 08:35:47 UTC

from their perspective they are the protagonists and we are the chorus.

2026-06-08 10:35:36 UTC

“when people opt to devote their energy to tracking the latest TikTok star or scrolling content instead of nurturing interpersonal relationships, they are effectively amusing themselves to death.” @nprofile…j6j4 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051261437487

2026-05-26 12:02:30 UTC

"This is the era of the hollowed-out government… We did not just outsource the janitorial services or the cafeteria. Instead, we outsourced the thinking… The result is not a 'leaner' government. It is a government that has forgotten how to learn." #IsraelKolawole https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-empty-architect/

2026-05-22 00:54:47 UTC

the thesis “contemporary social media contributes dysfunctionally to a collective sense of pessimistic nihilism” is, i think, correct.
it is not inconsistent, however, with the thesis “a great deal is terrible about Americans’ material conditions, and worse in a variety of ways than previously”
it seems kind of dumb to me that there has emerged a discourse that treats these hypotheses, which i’d characterize as mutually reinforcing, as if they were mutually inconsistent, there can be only one.

2026-05-21 12:37:21 UTC

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@nprofile…uxt4 (my AI-dar is not so good. i tend to assume authors are human, perhaps too naively.)

2026-05-21 11:18:58 UTC

i find it funny when people holding big retirement nest eggs in index funds wag about how they want to reduce the deficit.

2026-05-21 10:21:42 UTC

“In most companies, alignment is just the corporate name for silencing dissent. It doesn't mean everyone agrees. It means nobody says out loud that they don't. Those are different things.” https://phpc.social/@flowcontrol/116611921964285062

2026-05-13 12:04:48 UTC

[new draft post] The fiduciary class https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2026/05/13/the-fiduciary-class/index.html

2026-05-05 21:58:19 UTC

incentives matter. that's why we need to dramatically reduce them.

2026-05-03 21:28:20 UTC

[new draft post] The $200,000 standard deduction https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2026/05/03/the-$200000-standard-deduction/index.html

2026-03-01 15:26:46 UTC

maybe in an AI world most of our jobs should be legislator.

2026-02-02 14:09:38 UTC

i now view nearly all digital ads and sponsored content as some mix of cheating and manipulation and treat it as an ethical gaffe to click or even offer my attention to them.

2026-02-02 12:30:23 UTC

does AI mean young people should typically have more years or fewer years of education?

2025-12-28 16:52:54 UTC

if you want to get shit done, rather than a “strong man”, instead of autocracy, have you considered a democratically elected unicameral legislature which directly appoints and can remove the executive?

2025-12-22 20:49:48 UTC

you can never find scissors. not when you need them. never. so you end up buying another pair. until you move. then they all appear, come out of the woodwork, hundreds of them, snapping at you.

2025-12-16 02:25:43 UTC

i’m 55 years old, but when i talk to myself i still refer to myself as “kid”.

2025-12-15 16:04:22 UTC

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@nprofile…lkp5 i agree it’s good to move beyond “free trade” dogma. i just think tariffs are for the most part a really terrible tool, so terrible in fact they may well discredit my view that the balance and composition of trade is a necessary and legitimate object of policy, and give succor to foolishly dogmatic “free trade” under the usual neolib “see, TINA. we told you so.”
trade balance should be regulated on the regulatory, that is capital-account, side.

2025-12-15 05:45:06 UTC

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@nprofile…lkp5 it really makes little sense to tariff China either. tariffs are very shitty tools. the only kind that make any sense are narrowly targeted to sectors rather than sources. the US has not matched increasing trade deficits with increasing military expenditure, and certainly has not efficiently implemented conversion of fiscal inputs to military outputs. the US “provides demand” by running large fiscal deficits, but not linked to military menace.

2025-12-13 21:01:13 UTC

to say that it’s a fallen world is optimistic. it suggests the world is not still falling.

2025-12-12 15:38:45 UTC

An amazingly rich and thorough long read on rent control as an institution and the importance of security of tenure to the formation of public goods like vibrant and secure neighborhoods, by @nprofile…kyyx.
One of the best things I’ve ever read on rent control and the issues surrounding it.
https://okayfail.com/2018/rent-control-great-security-of-tenure.html

2025-12-02 18:54:51 UTC

there are assholes.
small assholes cause small problems.
big assholes—the more powerful sociopaths—cause big problems, while calling your attention to small assholes, and blaming them for everything.

2025-11-29 05:22:57 UTC

“Seeing like a software company” by #SeanGoedecke https://www.seangoedecke.com/seeing-like-a-software-company/
ht #EricBernhardsson

2025-11-18 23:03:43 UTC

[new draft post] Running on democracy hasn't been tried https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/11/18/running-on-democracy-hasnt-been-tried/index.html

2025-11-07 13:53:49 UTC

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@nprofile…3mrv i am a cretin on these things, but reading the Tiberius Gracchus Wikipedia page, it is remarkable how current and parallel the crisis of his assassination seems.
the conflict between plutocrats and land reformers outstrips the willingness of partisans to work within republican norms and is ultimately resolved through murder. the republic, then, is doomed.

2025-11-06 19:30:09 UTC

i think part of the worldview of the moderate Republican is it’ll be okay because the Democrats will clean up after our guys’ excesses.
i’m not sure they’ve cottoned to just what a degree of catastrophic success they’re now, um, enjoying.

2025-10-30 14:02:19 UTC

if you believe that a better world is possible, you may be tarred as a doomer, because achieving a better world involves calling attention to what is wrong with this one.
your very optimism is called pessimism, particularly by people for whom the current world is more than comfortable.

2025-10-30 02:24:14 UTC

Anyone else think the nuclear announcement is a concession that Xi requested?
The timing is... suspicious.
China is the nuclear laggard of the three apocalyptopowers. It wants to catch up, and has the technical and industrial means to do so, but it probably needs to test its new tech. However, it's invested a lot in portraying itself as good guy to America's putative evil empire.
The US' negotiating position vis China is objectively bad, but people can find creative… sweeteners.

2025-10-26 18:50:47 UTC

building a giant golden ballroom while cutting SNAP has very Marie Antoinette vibes.

2025-10-16 23:27:57 UTC

is anyone keeping a database of the black letter crimes that members of this administration seem to commit with some frequency, so that a next administration can finally take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed?

2025-10-08 12:42:52 UTC

the entrenchment of a gerontocratic political leadership globally suggests life extension research may have social costs its enthusiasts and funders have not reckoned with. for much of the world, the finitude of leaders’ natural lifespans represents the public’s best hope for change.

2025-10-05 23:41:27 UTC

Are there “readers” for archived or zipped websites, distributed as a single file? (That is, without users having to overtly unzip and open the top directory’s index.html or whatever.)
For offline convenience or as a kind of samizdat, one might imagine passing around zipped sites rather than links.

2025-10-05 23:00:40 UTC

“What appeals to me most about American traditions is the creedal nature of national identity, the Declaration’s insistence on universal equality, and the rights enumerated in our Constitution. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but I consider innovation, productivity growth, and sustained material prosperity to be downstream of free expression.” @nprofile…jp0m https://rajivsethi.substack.com/p/the-compact

2025-09-10 12:00:40 UTC

This is a good @nprofile…35xd piece. https://www.slowboring.com/p/national-conservatism-is-un-american

2025-08-20 13:24:06 UTC

cue the Rolling Stones 🎶 https://youtu.be/O4irXQhgMqg https://mastodon.social/@AltEvil/115060935067091081

2025-08-14 15:03:56 UTC

i don't know that any service has enjoyed an enshittification arc quite as steep as meetup.com, which briefly seemed like a revolutionary and essential utility and now seems like a scammy, spammy backwater.
i'm sorry for it too, because in its heyday i think it genuinely did lubricate and encourage in-person civil society. nothing as convenient and effective has emerged to supersede it.

2025-08-14 12:29:57 UTC

“We allowed markets to produce a class of politically connected billionaires, and defenders of this outcome foolishly argued that it would be to everyone’s benefit. Now that enough billionaires have lined up behind fascism and authoritarian consolidation, it’s clear that liberal governments today and in the future will need to figure out ways to greatly reduce the wealth and social power of that class overall.” @nprofile…hqea https://www.liberalcurrents.com/pluralism-partisanship-and-patriotism/

2025-08-13 18:11:43 UTC

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@nprofile…f5ca (have you seen what the S&P 500 is doing, after a brief flirtation with rationality in April? or the reemergence of GFC-style special purpose vehicles by the Fed to save the banks in 2020? then de facto insuring all deposits during the Silicon Valley Bank crisis in 2023? maybe things change under the chaos monkey, but so far i think stabilizing finance has remained a lodestar.)

2025-08-13 18:00:23 UTC

the natural lifecycle of an asset class is
1. succeed unconventionally
2. fail conventionally
3. bailout
4. enjoy state backing and stabilization indefinitely

2025-08-09 21:41:28 UTC

were TED talks a net positive or net negative for our collective cognition and deliberation?

2025-07-24 23:23:12 UTC

https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/114/910/782/507/238/039/original/e61d6f3a7a31e827.jpeg

2025-07-18 15:52:59 UTC

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@nprofile…el2a (i just don’t think US homeowners are a cartel that’s going to be broken sufficiently to enable new construction in already desirable places at nearly the scale that we require. when it’s the 1% you can fight. when it’s the 60%, you have to coopt or circumvent. i think anti-NIMBY politics has always been a foolish choice of means in pursuit of genuinely virtuous ends.)

2025-07-18 13:51:01 UTC

from “What determines rent?” #DavidTimoney https://fromarsetoelbow.blogspot.com/2025/07/what-determines-rent.html
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/114/874/558/678/534/536/original/56541133f1a09b8e.jpeg

2025-07-08 07:20:37 UTC

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@nprofile…20r6 i don’t think that’s right.
selling and running classified ads was a lucrative business largely decoupled from subscription revenue or readership. you just had to be known as the (or one of the few) local hosts of classified ads.
network TV news divisions were loss-leading prestige shops. NPR, PBS too much rely on ad-like sponsorship, but the relationship between audience size and sponsorship level is tenuous.
greater degree of decoupling from audience increases possibility of quality

2025-07-07 19:21:29 UTC

you don’t want news organizations optimizing for viewership or subscriptions.
what should they optimize for? that’s a hard question.
but definitely not viewership or subscriptions.

2025-07-07 10:06:18 UTC

is America a retrofuture?

2025-07-06 10:34:33 UTC

it’s more than a bit pathetic that a *Gulf petrostate* like UAE sees the writing on the wall and dives headlong into EVs + solar, while the “good ol’ USA” clings nostalgically to coal, oil, and monster trucks.
see #TimSahay #KateMackenzie https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/brics-in-2025/

2025-06-28 09:37:54 UTC

one nice thing about being in Europe is you get to see all the surveillance Substack is putting you through.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/114/760/317/232/204/891/original/189b10b8bfc4f018.jpeg

2025-06-26 23:08:13 UTC

By far the most common SMS message I send is “stop”.

2025-06-26 18:23:45 UTC

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@nprofile…rvfn absolutely. silly dance parties, abundant housing, amazing education, free health care should exist as options, but there should be no compulsion. except for kids, some compulsion, it’s the juvenile condition under any system. people who don’t identify as queer or commie are great and always welcome! (i think all the humans are queer and ‘commie’ is just a free-floating epithet to reappropriate. i’d describe myself as a social democrat, but if they wanna call us that why not embrace it!)

2025-06-26 17:15:25 UTC

i think democrats should rebrand themselves "queer commies for abundant housing, free health care, amazing education, and silly dance parties".
personally i like it, and it's unlikely to be worse branding than "democrats".

2025-06-22 07:33:11 UTC

neoconservativism first time as tragedy second time as ???

2025-06-20 00:27:38 UTC

for people who live there and love it, NYC in fact has a lot if market power.
no matter how rich you are, there really isn’t anywhere else like it, particularly if you are an English speaker and your politics are antagonistic to European social democracy.

2025-06-10 22:26:39 UTC

what do the national guardspeople and marines, most of whom don't have Stephen Miller's view of the world, think of the role into which they've been thrust?

2025-05-31 15:10:49 UTC

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@nprofile…lyhh A majority of constituents personally knowing and regularly interacting with representatives, would make them much less susceptible to lobbyists. With 350,000 representatives, lobbyists effectively have to persuade a whole public, they can’t just buy off a few people.

2025-05-31 00:31:42 UTC

i unironically think the job of the future might be politician.
we'd have a better world if we had a lot more of them, if every thousand, rather than every almost 800,000 of us, had a paid professional representative enfranchised in our political system.
see e.g. https://www.interfluidity.com/v2/9069.html

2025-05-30 18:24:04 UTC

Huh! IRS Direct File is implemented in part in #Scala, both JVM and JS. https://github.com/IRS-Public/direct-file

2025-05-26 17:39:51 UTC

the default american attitude is "the government is fucking up and screwing us", so whoever is the government has to swim upstream hard to avoid becoming unpopular.

2025-05-09 17:19:26 UTC

i never understood why people so distrustful someone might be trying to profit from a vaccine so trust people who are ostentatiously hawking supplements for money.

2025-05-08 20:04:19 UTC

how much is hollywood to blame for our elevation of antiheroes to positions of potentially catastrophic authority?

2025-05-05 20:33:38 UTC

it should matter much less who the President is.

2025-05-05 12:32:57 UTC

“french films” undermining our morals again.

2025-05-01 01:50:36 UTC

[new draft post] Overall but not bilateral balance https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2025/04/30/overall-but-not-bilateral-balance/index.html

2025-04-29 13:59:45 UTC

our phones are trying to make themselves our spouses, completing our sentences for us when we are half way through them.

2025-04-17 19:14:02 UTC

kind of emblematic of what DeSantis and Rufo have done to New College.
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/114/354/896/309/315/369/original/99a92ead22ece92e.jpeg

2025-04-16 14:27:08 UTC

“You cannot restrict unfreedom to a particular class of people. It will metastasize to consume the entire society.” @nprofile…g8lz https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/opinion/trump-court-order-constitution.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare ht @nprofile…klvg

2025-04-15 13:18:33 UTC

“It’s a great idea, if…done right. Federal lands are a national resource, and the nation needs more housing… What cities like St. George need most—and what they mostly refuse to allow—are modest homes and apartments for…workers and families.” @nprofile…x8v4 https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/opinion/housing-crisis-federal-land.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
(may i suggest microcities? www.interfluidity.com/v2/8772.html or just the sort of districts #MikeEliason would design and propose?)

2025-04-08 14:28:42 UTC

via @nprofile…k4ha, watch techbros cure the trade deficit by insisting surplus countries use the trade proceeds to… buy US debt.
“So basically… buy our stuff, or buy our debt. Either way, you're paying up.”
https://xcancel.com/seanheilweil/status/1909590601386930427
brilliant disruptive novel ideas from our tech sector.

2025-04-07 16:21:45 UTC

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We'd have achieved the same putative long-term gain without throwing much of the existing pipeline and several years of aggregate prosperity, in the US and around the world, into the wood chipper. /fin

2025-04-07 16:21:27 UTC

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But even if so, there was no need to so sharply destroy in-pipeline production. We could have telegraphed and gradually imposed over five years a more autarkic trade policy, if that's what we want. 6/

2025-04-07 16:21:06 UTC

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In the long-term, of course, if the policy environment stabilizes, um, somewhere, new production arrangements will be planned, and it's possible we find a new equilibrium more prosperous than the one we left, short-term pain for long-term gain. We have no evidence this is likely, but sure. 5/

2025-04-07 16:20:45 UTC

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We will in aggregate be poorer. The change is not merely distributional. 4/

2025-04-07 16:20:31 UTC

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Highly disruptive tariff moves are not like that. The stock market is declining because long-term economic plans, on the production side as well as the sales side, have been upended. Firms that would have been productive will disappear. 3/

2025-04-07 16:20:13 UTC

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It would have been a purely distributional change, stockholders would have gotten poorer but the "pie" we share would have been unchanged. 2/

2025-04-07 16:19:56 UTC

Suppose Trump had crashed the stock market by sharply raising the corporate tax rate. In a certain sense, "wealth" would have been destroyed, but our actual prosperity would not be impaired. 1/

2025-04-07 05:03:34 UTC

i feel like upscale television is moving on from antiheroes to good people caught in overwhelmingly tragic situations.

2025-04-04 16:12:40 UTC

if they want to onshore manufacturing and remain remotely cost-competitive, you'd think they'd be promoting their new guest worker programs rather than turning the US into an arbitrary detention and perhaps permanent rendition hellhole for our most inexpensive labor pool.

2025-04-03 17:27:37 UTC

not only does it have the lowest tariff rates, but the penguins aren't unionized.

2025-03-30 15:49:10 UTC

a firm is a human organization to accomplish something. recruiting and appeasing all stakeholders, generating cash flow sufficient to pay the bills, these are *constraints* a firm faces, not the goal or function or purpose of the firm.

2025-03-28 15:58:10 UTC

from @nprofile…ul6c https://resnikoff.beehiiv.com/p/living-with-a-murderer
https://cdn.masto.host/zirkus/media_attachments/files/114/240/878/201/064/565/original/9d4f8b7d759d7e4b.png

2025-03-28 00:32:56 UTC

i think much of the Republican coalition is tacitly sure they can do what they’ve persuaded themselves is called for, and the pointy-headed liberals who warn them of consequences will be wrong because God will reward and protect the USA they will have sanctified.

2025-03-26 16:50:08 UTC

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@nprofile…lcmx ( as more information comes out, the case that military planners were not in fact adhering to obligations to protect civilian life and proportionality grows stronger. after the fact, we may well conclude there were war crimes. but again, that's not something servicemembers executing these orders could have judged and refused. https://bsky.app/profile/eliothiggins.bsky.social/post/3llcabku2xk25 )

2025-03-26 13:10:45 UTC

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@nprofile…lcmx Orders to bomb targets carefully selected for military importance are not *prima facie* a war crime such that a servicemember could or should refuse such orders. Questions of proportionality might lead to accusations *ex post* of war crime, that risks or harms to civilians were beyond proportionate to legitimate military objectives, but that is beyond the duty or capacity of servicemembers to judge in real time. They had no basis to refuse these orders.

2025-03-26 12:28:17 UTC

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@nprofile…lcmx the servicemembers acting as ordered, on a mission that is not a war crime, are not the people responsible. their deaths are not to be sought or excused. in consequential terms, had incompetence led to their deaths, the probability of an escalation for all involved, leading to more civilian and noncivilian catastrophe, would be very high. it may already be high, but severe escalation (eg restarting full civil war) may also yet be avoided.

2025-03-26 03:34:21 UTC

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@nprofile…lcmx It would have been, yes.