EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

kinda wondering btw but i guess not enough to actually figure it out if substack is juicing their numbers somehow like are they giving away free intro subscriptions, maybe some big corporate deals where they can claim tons of subscribers but no ones really paying much, idk some of the numbers seem kind of fishy

He has about 7,000 subscribers, I think. At the price point he charges, you could make a decent living from 2000. It’s negligible stuff.

yeah 7000 is not that many people, i just cant imagine paying for those takes lol, tho stubstack being a venture funded startup you kinda have to assume theyre doing some at least halfway shady growth hacking

I really like Yglesias (I know, I know) and I'm not paying -- the Twitter feed is exactly the right amount of MY for me. And for that amount of money I can get access to an entire magazine's worth of writing, or a whole nother streaming service. I don't really get who the customers are.

CNN's Rick Santorum: "We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes we have Native Americans but candidly there isn't much Native American culture in American culture" pic.twitter.com/EMxOEYDbg7

— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) April 26, 2021

I feel like if substack was giving away free "paid" subscriptions we'd be hearing about it already. Also most substacks I'm familiar with (not Matty's) have a level of free content and then content that's available only for paid subscribers.

sorry to be sanctimonious, but that that video clip of MY isn't considered disgustingly racist is shocking. Like I literally never want to hear another thing from this dude who giggles his way through a mealy-mouthed endorsement of white supremacy and genocide. WTF

the neoliberal technocracy is plainly sociopathic amoral etc

yeah that was more or less my existing impression of him. I think what surprised me with that clip is how nakedly ideological he actually is, and it's not neoliberalism he's endorsing it's imperialism and colonialism. There's nothing really neoliberal about the US Army waging war on and committing genocide against sovereign native populations followed by the govt handing out free land to white settlers

anyway, this guys sucks, sorry for ranting

neoliberalism IMHO strongly endorses american empire eg dem leadership are all crazy hawks, love american exceptionalism etc, tho i guess you could just call that liberalism since it predates the neoliberal shift

I'm using a stricter definition for sure, not that there's an agreed-upon consensus, plus the fact it's anachronistic to call the settlement of the West neoliberal. We're probably due for a better term to describe the US's combination of domestic neoliberalization + a culture of nationalism + a powerful interventionist state abroad

That little clip of Yglesias talking about Manifest Destiny is so shorn of context I honestly have no idea what his view is on anything, other than that he thinks the US should be successful and powerful (whatever that means).

im not calling the settlement of the west neoliberal im observing that neoliberal ideology necessarily endorses american empire both historical and present, i mean if you want corporate power to flourish you need a enforcement mechanism, and of course you need to glorify whatever got us to this point xp

That little clip of Yglesias talking about Manifest Destiny is so shorn of context I honestly have no idea what his view is on anything, other than that he thinks the US should be successful and powerful (whatever that means).

― o. nate, Monday, April 26, 2021 3:29 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

sounds like something yglesias would say

tho im sure the great minds yglesias et al would discard past glories if it suited their purpose i dont think theyre super invested in it

*cue obama giving a super sleepy speech about the city on the hill*

I mean is the knock that he shouldn't want the US to be successful and powerful or is it that he mentioned American westward expansion without proper emphasis on the crimes associated with it?

feel like you can do better maybe rewatch it

m not calling the settlement of the west neoliberal im observing that neoliberal ideology necessarily endorses american empire both historical and present, i mean if you want corporate power to flourish you need a enforcement mechanism, and of course you need to glorify whatever got us to this point xp

― lag∞n, Monday, April 26, 2021 3:30 PM (eight minutes ago)

got it, agreed

🙏

he mentioned American westward expansion without proper emphasis on the crimes associated with it?

lol ok

feel like you can do better maybe rewatch it

I don't think there's any point in rewatching 20 words taken out of context. If I want to actually understand something, I'd be better off watching the whole segment that was extracted from, or even better, reading his book.

dare you

This leaves out all the hee-hee tittering, but here's what he said:

"you know my progressive friends will want me to acknowledge that some bad things happened across the settling of the West and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, it was done for a reason, and I'm basically arguing for a continuation of that kind of vision. That, you know, the United States is great and should want to be great and powerful and that means having more people."

by all means read his book though, I'm sure it is enlightening

well, I feel edified. Thanks!

I live to serve

"some bad things" is a strange way to rephrase "genocide and crimes against humanity"

“Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette” seems to indicate that Marty’s future turn is to neoconservatism. Presumably there are still a few billionaires who’ll cut checks for that.

Maybe there are some good omelette recipes in his book.

mattys plan for a billion americans is so loony, the idea that population equals power is comically simplistic thinking, i mean bangladesh is in the top ten, the usa has ~800 foreign military bases, i wonder if he just looked at china and was like hey lots of people, kinda points to the fact that if you want to have a career as an apologist for the awful things done in the name of power you have to be deeply stupid, some would argue that its all careerism and cynicism but i think the job really requires natural ability

even without casually dismissing genocide, just the idea of looking at what america is up to in the world and thinking yeah we need more of that is fucking deranged and unmoored from anything good, id be willing to bet he makes some sort of lesser of two evils argument re china in the book, no doubt appreciated by everyone trying to cook up a new cold war, but obviously *extremely debate club voice* thats a fallacy

IOZ shredding this book is probably embarrassing niche nostalgia but I enjoyed it: https://newrepublic.com/article/159306/emptiness-matthew-yglesias-biggest-idea-billion-americans-book-review

he links to this old MY Slate post in that piece, which is p amazing: https://slate.com/business/2013/04/international-factory-safety.html

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire wasn’t a tragedy and here’s why...

in short, Matt Yglesias is a man of reasons

lol xp

You have to admit Matt's billion-population-or-bust Big Idea has managed to gain more attention than anyone could have predicted, if they'd based their prediction purely on its merits (hint: it has no merits). In that sense, Matt has already succeeded beyond his wildest dreams (hint: if he ever thought for a moment anyone would pay attention to this, it was a wild dream).

Yglesias has neither the visionary scope nor the technical expertise to make any of this remotely plausible as a sustained argument, a “case for thinking bigger” if you will, or even as a set of discrete proposals. He has no theory of political power or change, no idea how any of this will come to pass. “There’s no way that all the specific ideas in this book will ever command broad consensus in American society,” he writes on page one.

actually! i think this is a more important pundit qualification than being dumb, im moving being dumb down to #2, tho obvs theyre related, and its interesting to see what pundits do when confronted with people who do have a theory of change, an example would be matty et al criticism of BLMs messaging particularly re defund the police, it freaks them out, they cite polls like this is not popular! and will not work, in complete ignorance of every movement ever, including those they claim to support, without history, the end of history

idk if it was address itt but when he was criticizing defund the police people on twitter asked him if he had ever been part of a collective action and he said that in college hed helped to get the minimum wage havard pays its workers raised, then one of the organizers of that campaign showed up and said that he had come to a couple meetings as a reporter for some harvard newspaper or maybe his blog and then just talked about all his beautiful ideas for what they should do and that was the extent of his involvement

Relevant to today's revive:

In a footnote, he writes that “Argentina, famously, was one of the richest countries in the world at the beginning of World War I, only to stumble into a seemingly endless series of policy errors that have ended with it left in the dust.” Most of this happened not after WWI, and not in a “stumble,” but after the U.S. initiated Operation Condor to destroy South American democracy and ignite decades of torture, murder, and terror. The U.S. small truck market, the complexities of the U.S. visa system, and the interpretation of economic statistics from “Purchasing Power Parity” to worker productivity all fall within the ambit of Yglesias’s ability to hit the backboard but never make a layup.

can Yglesias write an explainer about basketball

just join ILH

Me every time this thread is revived: "I hope this is about Yglesias and not Klein."

klein is ok imo, we could do worse

the boy who was impressed when he saw paul ryan with a pie chart

Policy is what serious people write about: Matthew Yglesias is a serious person; ergo, Yglesias writes about policy.

applies equally to klein, a very serious young man

think he technically qualifies as an invertebrate

Bill Gates saw the coronavirus coming. Here’s his plan to beat it. https://t.co/7qufRnD6xd

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) April 27, 2020

suit jacket and tie with jeans

https://i.imgur.com/NjbIHs6.png