EZRA KLEIN v MATT YGLESIAS

i was at a wedding and a girl seated at my table was like wait is everyone at this table a creative, i have since become a purely technical worker

You excused yourself and had a drink at the table of influencers.

lol there was no such thing as influencers then!

i kind of like influencers tho you know for being so cyberpunk

the only influencers then were spirits and drugs nyuk nyuk

ayye

I'll be over at the disruptors tent. They've got vapeable stem cells.

Personally, I have found a lot of value in reading and listening to Ezra Klein. I find his views insightful and thought-provoking, from his analyses of U.S. politics to his journeys into psychological terrain on subjects like creativity, happiness, anxiety, etc. I'm sure he has made some mistakes in his career as a journalist, and I'm confident that I wouldn't agree with every word he has written. But at the same time, a few episodes of his podcast were especially helpful to me when I was suddenly laid off a couple of years ago and was searching for some meaning and direction. Maybe my admiration for him makes me a dupe of the establishment, a dumb member of the bourgeoisie. So be it. I'm happier this way.

Namaste. 🙏

ek is willing to explore a pretty wide range of ideas and does not exclude his own judgments from his own examinations. these are good things. my is like the king of smug conclusory argumentation for the most part. imo.

mistakes in his career as a journalist? idk his sycophancy seems more like a feature than a bug, i have not followed kleins recent career that closely but seems like hes branched out into more of the world of ideas where he used to be a pure wonk guy, i suspect i would not like his ideas about ideas but im not begrudging anyone who likes to listen to a podcast about interesting stuff, however i do think we should be critical listeners as far as whats being sold to us, and klein as a times columnist is certainly being sold as someone with serious political ideas, which i think is pretty clearly not true

i enjoyed how ek's obsession with the filibuster for the past like 5 years became the running joke of some of his dialogue commentary-- about him having a this nerdy, perseverative tick, but fuck. weren't wrong. and yeah, i know he was not unique on the warnings, but he was definitely most insistent upon mentioning it.

I don’t think Klein’s a bad guy and I think I’ve read worthwhile things from him recently but it’s a little hard to get over the fact that Joe Biden had a much clearer understanding of Paul Ryan than he did.

if I fucked up as bad as Klein did there I'd have run away in shame and changed careers tbh

not even saying this as a criticism really, I just don't understand pundit mindset.

yeah i mean credit where both of the guys itt tend to be right about procedural things like that, and tbh both of them have prob had a real effect towards normalizing killing the filibuster xp

if I fucked up as bad as Klein did there I'd have run away in shame and changed careers tbh

not even saying this as a criticism really, I just don't understand pundit mindset.

takes a certain type to be a pundit, and its not necessarily good lol

i have not followed kleins recent career that closely

To be fair, while I have been familiar with Klein for a long time, I have not actually followed him closely *until* the past 4-5 years (basically, when he started his podcast, though I also liked a lot of what he wrote for Vox). So I missed the whole Paul Ryan thing that people always bring up, as though whatever he said in 2012 or whenever renders him a pudding-brained sycophant who lacks the critical faculty possessed by the wisest ILXors. Based on reading his Vox/NYT articles, reading his book, and listening to his podcast, I do find him to be "someone with serious political ideas," so what does that say about me?

idk really know what are his serious political ideas you like

Probably that you don’t go on Twitter very much xp

I *wish* I didn't go on Twitter that much. I spent far too much time there. I follow a lot of other journalists who probably hold similar opinions to Ezra.

Most of the good political opinions I see are from 21 year old transgender Maoists

I think he has been OTM about the filibuster, and I thought his book about polarization was pretty good. (Which, by the way, is an analysis grounded in political science that makes clear that the mid-20th-century era of bipartisanship was a corrupt bargain in many ways and also directly blames Republicans for the current era of gridlock. It's not a plaintive exercise in nostalgia, as the title may unwittingly suggest.)

theres a general consensus on the left about the failure of the technocratic approach, and erza is certainly if nothing a technocrat, someone who can be right about the filibuster but then sit down with bill gates, an utterly ruthless operator in service of his own power and perfect emblem for all thats wrong with the world, and see a fellow logic driven problem solver, turns out abandoning morality in favor of reason, false binary obvs, was... immoral

an utterly ruthless operator in service of his own power and perfect emblem for all thats wrong with the world

You've lost me

My general impression was that Klein would write well-argued columns about a particular political situation that viewed Republicans as mainly good-faith actors with principles that he didn’t share, and then the Republicans would do something to make it clear they had no interest in governing, and then Klein would write something castigating Republicans for their behavior, and then his brain would reset and he would not have changed his general viewpoint at all.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation worse for the world than anything Microsoft ever did certainly

Yeah, the eradication of wild poliovirus from all but two countries in the world is a travesty.

might want to check out what bill gates is trending for today

My general impression was that Klein would write well-argued columns about a particular political situation that viewed Republicans as mainly good-faith actors with principles that he didn’t share, and then the Republicans would do something to make it clear they had no interest in governing, and then Klein would write something castigating Republicans for their behavior, and then his brain would reset and he would not have changed his general viewpoint at all.

― JoeStork, Tuesday, April 27, 2021 1:00 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's entirely conceivable that Klein operated in this way in the Bush/Obama era. I don't recognize it at all as a description of his writing in the Trump/Biden era.

(I say "entirely conceivable" because I didn't read him back then. It wouldn't surprise me!)

It's entirely conceivable that Klein operated in this way in the Bush/Obama era. I don't recognize it at all as a description of his writing in the Trump/Biden era.

― jaymc, Tuesday, April 27, 2021 2:04 PM (twenty-nine seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

thats become untenable due to uhh developments but his approach with gates et al is no different

don't really care about these people but i sure do enjoy reading lag00n pinning them down.

*bows deeply*

its my personal feeling that it would be best if everyone just agreed that accumulating billions of dollars is a fundamental moral wrong, but if anyone wants some details on how exactly bill gates is saving the world

Gates's role in vaccine apartheid is laid out in exquisite detail in @nataliesurely's outstanding @newrepublic feature, which delves into Gates's longstanding project to sideline democratic governments and cooperation in favor of monopoly tyranny.https://t.co/ZCKTy1CGOU

7/

— Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) April 13, 2021

you gotta tip you hat to the gates pr machine while he was running microsoft it wouldve been hard to find someone who took issue with calling him ruthless, even his fans lol

I like The New Republic and will read that article. I don't have much interest in defending Gates as a person, though I do maintain that his foundation has done good work.

sideline democratic governments and cooperation in favor of monopoly tyranny

People who stand at the apex of hierarchical institutions are predominately biased in favor of monopoly tyranny. They see it as supremely efficient and fail to see its inherent weaknesses, because its greatest weakness is complete reliance on one highly fallible individual: themself. They're far more likely to be megalomaniacs than egalitarians.

I like The New Republic and will read that article. I don't have much interest in defending Gates as a person, though I do maintain that his foundation has done good work.

― jaymc, Tuesday, April 27, 2021 11:45 AM (thirteen minutes ago)

and Hitler was a vegetarian, or whatever.

i am reading No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy, it's pretty good

in defending Gates as a person, though I do maintain that his foundation has done good work.

Would better work have been done taxing the shit out of him for the last 40 years, though?

If we had a 98% estate tax we wouldn’t even have to know his name.

That book sounds good, harbl. I've liked some of Anand Giridharadas's work in a similar vein.

Would better work have been done taxing the shit out of him for the last 40 years, though?

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Tuesday, April 27, 2021 2:05 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The answer to that question doesn't seem very clear to me. He absolutely should be taxed to the hilt; as far as I'm concerned, we should go back to Eisenhower-era marginal tax rates. On the other hand, there are a lot of people in developing countries who have benefited from the Gates Foundation's funding of large-scale public-health initiatives.

His money could have built us some cool aircraft carriers though

If you've seen one cool aircraft carrier, you've seen 'em all.

I guess...in a universe where the US still had Eisenhower-era tax rates...the military budget would also be slashed to the bone? I mean, if we're dream-wanking and all.

don't dream, it's wanking

I guess...in a universe where the US still had Eisenhower-era tax rates...the military budget would also be slashed to the bone?

https://i.imgur.com/dfzbMN1.jpeg

a funny thing about matt and ezra as old millennials is that not long ago coming up as bloggers they were considered state of the art, but then everyone younger than them ended up taking a hard left turn and now theyre like total grandpapaws, you couldnt pay a 25 year old to take technocratic ideas, turns out they were the last of a dying breed