Economics can either enable the slide toward fascism, or defend affordability, dignity, and democracy.
I wrote ANTI-FASCIST ECONOMICS with my baby by my side—a constant reminder that the future should be livable for all.
Out in October with Random House.
Trump is within sight of an under 30% overall approval rating.
One of the most important causes right now is to establish a media narrative and popular support behind severe punishments and consequences to our present criminals running things.
The amount of inequality created by capitalism depends on how we structure it cepr.net/publications...
As wealth concentrates, so does power — the power to influence elections, shape policy, tilt markets and define the terms of public debate.
Taxing billionaires is not radical.
What is radical is allowing a system where extreme wealth exists alongside widespread hardship.
Grift, grift, and a bit more grift. How can any voter tolerate this?
Today’s latest Virtual Sentiments episode is with @samuel-bagg.bsky.social on his excellent book on how democracy helps us fight state capture. I’ve posted the episode and some updated thoughts talking about the DOW vs Anthropic contract dispute at my Substack
open.substack.com/pub/kristenc...
Thrilled to release this conversation with Sam on his excellent book, Dispersion of Power, on using democracy to guard against state capture. A topic that has only become even more pertinent since we recorded it and is not going away any time soon!
Grateful to @kristenrosec.bsky.social for a really stimulating conversation on the "Virtual Sentiments" podcast about the past, present, and future of state capture and democracy. www.mercatus.org/hayekprogram...
The Department of Political Science just got a whole lot better! We are so thrilled to have these wonderful people on board for the coming academic year. 👏 #uofsc #polisci
🧵 Democracy feels like it's in a rough state at the moment across the globe, and we hear various explanations, like polarisation, extremism, disinformation, and loss of trust. But what if those explanations are mainly symptoms and we've been trying to treat them rather than the underlying causes?
NYTimes Headline: The Women Who Believe That Women Should Lose the Right to Vote Subhead: Adherents to biblical patriarchy support household voting: One household, one vote--the husband's. They say the idea is catching on.
The New York Times rolling up its sleeves to do the hard work of normalizing the idea that women should not have the right to vote.
Lost his state senate seat too! Not a name you forget though 😂
Screenshot of news article reading: What is The Woodley? The Woodley, a two-building, 102-unit complex planned for 2120 Main St., was approved by city boards in 2024 despite pushback from neighbors who feared the complex would house homeless veterans. Attorney and then-state senator Dick Harpootlian also joined the fight, saying at a city meeting he would “fight (the project) tooth and nail” if it housed homeless veterans. “These people don’t need homeless people living in their neighborhood,” Harpootlian said at a Columbia Design and Development Review Commission meeting in 2024. “My office is two blocks from here. I don’t need more homeless people defecating in my parking lot every morning, which is what is happening right now.”
Screenshot of same article, later on, reading: The Woodley could bring up to 110 new residents downtown, adding to the more than 5,000 planned for various apartment complexes in the city’s center in the next few years. The complex will rise across Scott Street from the 320-unit 2222 Main View luxury apartments, which broke ground in late 2025. The developer of 2222 Main View, Commonwealth Properties, has been very communicative with the neighborhood, Wellman said. “I'm not sure anybody wants apartments in their neighborhood, but these are going to be high-end apartments, probably the nicest in the city, and I have great confidence that it's going to be managed really well, because of how the developer has worked with the neighborhood from the moment he was thinking about this project,” she said.
capital, for some reason: maybe we'll provide housing for some of the unhoused people in your neighborhood?
Democratic elected officials:
New book coedited by former RGCS postdoc Samuel Bagg @samuel-bagg.bsky.social now Assistant Professor of Political Science at U of South Carolina:
Democracy and Competition: Rethinking the Forms, Purposes, and Values of Competition in Democracy
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....
Post from Andrew A.N. Deloucas @aandeloucas.com: In line with discussion about the job market, the latest majors being closed at Syracuse University: Nine majors "sunsetting": • Classical civilization • Classics (Greek and Latin) • Digital humanities • Fine arts • German • Latino-Latin American studies • Middle Eastern studies • Modern Jewish studies • Russian ALT
The First University in the Nation to Build a Center Dedicated to the Creator Economy Syracuse University is creating something that doesn't exist anywhere else in higher education. The Center for the Creator Economy is the first academic center of its kind on a U.S. college campus. Led jointly by the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and the Martin). Whitman School of Management, the center reinforces Syracuse University's commitment to bold, forward-looking academic leadership. By aligning strengths in entrepreneurship, media, communications, athletics and digital infrastructure, the University is charting how higher education can prepare students for the 21st-century economy.
Another university getting rid of things you could only ever do at a university and replacing them with stuff a 13-year-old can do on a phone
And here's my thread on the book as a whole: bsky.app/profile/samu...
Here's my thread on the post, and the chapter it comes from: bsky.app/profile/samu...
Thanks to @lpeblog.bsky.social for highlighting my blog post with @shaiagmon.bsky.social in their weekly roundup! The post draws from our chapter in a new book on Democracy and Competition, which I co-edited with @alfredmoore.bsky.social: www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10....
Far from an unambiguous endorsement of democratic minimalism, then, Schumpeter’s classic work should be read as a call for a more responsible—and responsive—form of elite competition, if not in the name of justice then at least to ensure its own survival.
Schumpeter's real lesson, Piano suggests, is that maintaining a competitive political system requires not only an ethos of restraint from leaders, but also a measure of socio-economic regulation and redistribution.
Yet in some ways our context today seems closer to Schumpeter’s: ‘When electoral institutions fail to provide the democratic policies that it promises, the regime’s entire legitimacy is called into question, liberal freedoms are taken for granted, and authoritarian threats resurface’
This crucial aspect of Schumpeter’s argument—that the protection of liberal institutions from authoritarian threats requires that political elites respond to widespread popular demands for economic management, planning and redistribution—was sidelined during the Cold War.
Accordingly, he suggests that elder care, education, and public health could be provided without undermining the efficiency of private ownership.
Against the image of ‘creative destruction’ we might associate with him, Schumpeter writes: ‘There is no point in trying to conserve obsolescent industries indefinitely; but there is a point in trying to avoid their coming down with a crash... in attempting to turn a rout... into orderly retreat.’
He is not just aware of the limitations of a minimalist theory of electoral democracy, he is also ‘highly attentive to the ways in which the success of electoral procedure is bound up with material aspects of political economy and the ideological currents that emerge with it’
Piano's key claim is that when we consider Schumpeter’s full argument in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy -- not just the highly influential Part IV -- it becomes clear that he recognized these problems himself.
Back to Natasha's chapter: critics have long said minimalist democracy can’t explain its own survival. Why would elites follow the rules? What keeps competition from breaking down?
(In a series of posts over the next few weeks, I'll briefly describe each chapter in this exciting new volume. Follow along!) bsky.app/profile/samu...
Joseph Schumpeter is remembered as the paradigmatic theorist of minimalist democracy. But in her chapter for the volume, Natasha Piano challenges this standard reading at its core.
Yes, and I do make that argument elsewhere! But it’s not as straightforward as it seems. And regardless, it’s still true that some of the tactics needed to reduce polarization would seem to be at odds with some of the tactics needed to fight concentrated power. Key is leaning into those that don’t!
