Pluralistic: The capitalism of fools (28 Aug 2025)


Today's links


A bloated, shouting billionaire standing on a parapet atop a wall bearing gilded letters that spell out $ACRED TARIFF WALL. He has Trump's hair. Behind him is an ashamed-looking elephant in the livery of the symbol of the GOP. Below the wall is a circle of cavorting monkeys in bright garb. They stand amid a pastoral oil painted scene.

The capitalism of fools (permalink)

As Trump rails against free trade, demands public ownership stakes in corporations that receive government funds, and (selectively) enforces antitrust law, some (stupid) people are wondering, "Is Trump a communist?"

In The American Prospect, David Dayen writes about the strange case of Trump's policies, which fly in the face of right wing economic orthodoxy and have the superficial trappings of a leftist economic program:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-08-28-judge-actually-existing-trump-economy/

The problem isn't that tariffs are always bad, nor is it that demanding state ownership stakes in structurally important companies that depend on public funds is bad policy. The problem is that Trump's version of these policies sucks, because everything Trump touches dies, and because he governs solely on vibes, half-remembered wisdom imparted by the last person who spoke to him, and the dying phantoms of old memories as they vanish beneath a thick bark of amyloid plaque.

Take Trump's demand for a 10% stake in Intel (a course of action endorsed by no less than Bernie Sanders). Intel is a company in trouble, whose financialization has left it dependent on other companies (notably TMSC) to make its most advanced chips. The company has hollowed itself out, jettisoning both manufacturing capacity and cash reserves, pissing away the funds thus freed up on stock buybacks and dividends.

Handing Trump a 10% "golden share" does nothing to improve Intel's serious structural problems. And if you take Trump at his word and accept that securing US access to advanced chips is a national security priority, Trump's Intel plan does nothing to advance that access. But it gets worse: Trump also says denying China access to these chips is a national security priority, but he greenlit Nvidia's plan to sell its top-of-the-range silicon to China in exchange for a gaudy statuette and a 15% export tax.

It's possible to pursue chip manufacturing as a matter of national industrial policy, and it's even possible to achieve this goal by taking ownership stakes in key firms – because it's often easier to demand corporate change via a board seat than it is to win the court battles needed to successfully invoke the Defense Production Act. The problem is that Trumpland is uninterested in making any of that happen. They just want a smash and grab and some red meat for the base: "Look, we made Intel squeal!"

Then there's the Trump tariffs. Writing in Vox EU, Lausanne prof of international business Richard Baldwin writes about the long and checkered history of using tariffs to incubate and nurture domestic production:

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/08/trumpian-tariffs-rerun-the-failed-strategy-of-import-substitution-industrialization.html

The theory of tariffs goes like this: if we make imports more expensive by imposing a tax on them (tariffs are taxes that are paid by consumers, after all), then domestic manufacturers will build factories and start manufacturing the foreign goods we've just raised prices on. This is called "import substitution," and it really has worked, but only in a few cases.

What do those cases have in common? They were part of a comprehensive program of "export discipline, state-directed credit, and careful government–business coordination":

https://academic.oup.com/book/10201

In other words, tariffs only work to reshore production where there is a lot of careful planning, diligent data-collection, and review. Governments have to provide credit to key firms to get them capitalized, provide incentives, and smack nonperformers around. Basically, this is the stuff that Biden did for renewables with the energy sector, and – to a lesser extent – for silicon with the CHIPS Act.

Trump's not doing any of that. He's just winging it. There's zero follow-through. It's all about appearances, soundbites, and the libidinal satisfaction of watching corporate titans bend the knee to your cult leader.

This is also how Trump approaches antitrust. When it comes to corporate power, both Trump and Biden's antitrust enforcers are able to strike terror into the hearts of corporate behemoths. The difference is that the Biden administration prioritized monopolists based on how harmful they were to the American people and the American economy, whereas Trump's trustbusters target companies based on whether Trump is mad at them:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

What's more, any company willing to hand a million or two to a top Trump enforcer can just walk away from the charges:

https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-19-doj-insider-blows-whistle-pay-to-play-antitrust-corruption/

In her 2023 book Doppelganger, Naomi Klein introduces the idea of a right-wing "mirror world" that offers a conspiratorial, unhinged version of actual problems that leftists wrestle with:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

For example, the antivax movement claims that pharma companies operate on the basis of unchecked greed, without regard to the harm their defective products cause to everyday people. When they talk about this, they sound an awful like leftists who are angry that the Sacklers killed a million Americans with their opiods and then walked away with billions of dollars:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/05/third-party-nonconsensual-releases/#au-recherche-du-pedos-perdue

Then there are the conspiracy theories about voting machines. Progressives have been sounding the alarm about the security defects in voting machine since the Bush v Gore years, but that doesn't mean that Venezuelan hackers stole the 2020 election for Biden:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/11/seeing-things/#ess

When anti-15-minute-city weirdos warn that automated license-plate cameras are a gift to tyrants both petty and gross, they are repeating a warning that leftists have sounded since the Patriot Act:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

The mirror-world is a world where real problems (the rampant sexual abuse of children by powerful people and authortiy figures) are met with fake solutions (shooting up pizza parlors and transferring Ghislaine Maxwell to a country-club prison):

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/czd049y2qymo

Most of the people stuck in the mirror world are poor and powerless, because desperation makes you an easy mark for grifters peddling conspiracy theories. But Trump's policies on corporate power are what happens in the mirror world inhabited by the rich and powerful.

Trump is risking the economic future of every person in America (except a few cronies), but that's not the only risk here. There's also the risk that reasonable people will come to view industrial policy, government stakes in publicly supported companies, and antitrust as reckless showboating, a tactic exclusively belonging to right wing nutjobs and would-be dictators.

Sociologists have a name for this: they call it "schismogenesis," when a group defines itself in opposition to its rivals. Schismogenesis is progressives insisting that voting machines and pharma companies are trustworthy and that James Comey is a resistance hero:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

After we get rid of Trump, America will be in tatters. We're going to need big, muscular state action to revive the nation and rebuild its economy. We can't afford to let Trump poison the well for the very idea of state intervention in corporate activity.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Cops have to pay $41k for stopping man from videoing them https://web.archive.org/web/20050905015507/http://www.paed.uscourts.gov/documents/opinions/05D0847P.pdf

#20yrsago Commercial music in podcasts: the end of free expression? https://memex.craphound.com/2005/08/26/commercial-music-in-podcasts-the-end-of-free-expression/

#10yrsago North Dakota cops can now use lobbyist-approved taser/pepper-spray drones https://www.thedailybeast.com/first-state-legalizes-taser-drones-for-cops-thanks-to-a-lobbyist/

#10yrsago Illinois mayor appoints failed censor to town library board https://ncac.org/news/blog/mayor-appoints-would-be-censor-to-library-board

#10yrsago IBM’s lost, glorious fabric design https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/users/mepelman/visits/qtxg/87597377/

#10yrsago Former mayor of SLC suing NSA for warrantless Olympic surveillance https://www.techdirt.com/2015/08/26/prominent-salt-lake-city-residents-sue-nsa-over-mass-warrantless-surveillance-during-2002-olympics/

#10yrsago Health’s unkillable urban legend: “You must drink 8 glasses of water/day” https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/upshot/no-you-do-not-have-to-drink-8-glasses-of-water-a-day.html?_r=0

#10yrsago Austin Grossman’s CROOKED: the awful, cthulhoid truth about Richard Nixon https://memex.craphound.com/2015/08/26/austin-grossmans-crooked-the-awful-cthulhoid-truth-about-richard-nixon/

#10yrsago After Katrina, FBI prioritized cellphone surveillance https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2015/aug/27/stingray-katrina/

#10yrsago Germany’s spy agency gave the NSA the private data of German citizens in exchange for Xkeyscore access https://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2015-08/xkeyscore-nsa-domestic-intelligence-agency

#10yrsago Elaborate spear-phishing attempt against global Iranian and free speech activists, including an EFF staffer https://citizenlab.ca/2015/08/iran_two_factor_phishing/

#10yrsago Commercial for Banksy’s Dismaland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2NG-MgHqEk

#5yrsago Outdoor education beat TB in 1907 https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/27/cult-chalk/#tb

#5yrsago Hagoromo, mathematicians' cult chalk https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/27/cult-chalk/#hagoromo

#5yrsago Principles for platform regulation https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/27/cult-chalk/#eff-eu

#5yrsago It's blursday https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/26/destroy-surveillance-capitalism/#blursday

#5yrsago Surveillance Capitalism is just capitalism, plus surveillance https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/26/destroy-surveillance-capitalism/#surveillance-monopolism

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

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A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025

  • "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
    https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. (1090 words yesterday, 45491 words total).

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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