Comment by didibus
2 days ago
I just couldn't keep reading with the constant "antitrust left" being refered to on every sentence.
The issue, is that for me, the reader, it framed the piece as the author seemingly positioning themselves as the "the other side", the one that knows best and isn't those "antitrust left". It felt like it was creating a strawman and was engaging in tribal signaling.
And when you consider the rest of the piece was them claiming they called the sources, and that the sources said that the "antitrust left" had misquoted them and misrepresented their findings, but the author somehow is this unbiased truth, and definitely really for real called the the sources and didn't at all misconstrue or anything, no they wouldn't do that, unlike the "antitrust left".
I'm about as far left as you can be, as a syndicalist anarchist, and I definitely perceived a bit of what you described. But I'm not super worried about it because he didn't say "the left", but rather a specific lefty position.
But also, the left isn't uniform on housing policy. Some folks want anti trust and limited capital ownership. Some folks want to de commodify housing. Some folks want all housing to be government built and owned. The left is a very diverse place (and the joke is no one hates leftists more than other leftists).
The people the article quoted as "left" like Stoller are really not left, and the whole anti-left felt more like a unnecessary strawman label and definite turn off for me reading it. I would characterize Stoller as an independent anti-monopolist - not really on the right or left spectrum at all politically. Unless the right is now pro-monopoly.
He’s specifically talking about Zephyr Teachout. Her work is specifically in anti-monopoly stuff.
3 replies →
Then why even bother calling it "left" at this point? Just say they're anti-monopoly. Is there really nobody on the right who are also anti-monopoly?
Presumably because anti monopoly right is much less common? Or because the anti monopoly right is concerned with different aspects of monopoly?
If someone said they were anti monopoly, that the government should do something to prevent businesses from operating like that, I'd never expect them to be from the right to be honest.
6 replies →
Tbh classification that makes most sense is wealth level.
Ultra rich and very rich and rich and upper middle class and ..
Because the underlying beliefs of a 'left' anti-monopolist and a 'right' anti-monopolist are likely very different, and similarly their proposed solutions and view of an ideal society will also diverge significantly?
---
Also, it should be noted that we lack sufficiently concise but specific terms to use instead, and because alternative terms that are used are relative, and open to interpretation.
e.g.:
Many political commentators currently use the term "populist" to describe someone who's somewhat divergent from the capitalist political mainstream (and in US terms, I'd include the current Democrat establishment and traditional non-MAGA Republicans in this group). But when the term is applied to people as diverse as Corbyn, Sanders, and AOC on the one side, and Orban, Farage, and Trump on the other, it's nonsensical without much more explanation.
4 replies →
It's a shame to let two words color your opinion on an entire piece like that; I found it to be really compelling.
Your last paragraph is a bit confusing; is it your position that Derek's lying? Which quote did you think was inaccurate? Or are you specifically concerned with his rhetoric?
Yes, that's why I commented, as a kind of feedback, the piece could be so much better with a very small tweak. Replace "antitrust-left" with the name of the exact handful of people whose book/article/stance you are refuting.
Two words that were repeated at least a half dozen times and used as the framing for the article. I literally went and looked at past articles to see how much this framing was used (and it wasn't) because when you use this framing you are literally appealing to tribalism and usually that comes with a LOT of other baggage.
Yeah this article treats it like an either/or situation where monopoly's somehow make it so regulations aren't the issue instead of what most of the monopoly takes say which is that monopoly builders make the situation worse and combine with the other problems.
I watched an interview with both the authors. They read as both left leaning but self critical of the regulations the left has put in place. It seemed like this leftist identity is part of the story so maybe that is why it is mentioned so much.
https://youtu.be/D9wga7S3nAw?si=mZT3yhUG_z2DKref
I sense the labelling is a tell of sorts. As to the critique, I think the focus on homebuilder corporate profits leaves out important parts of the ecosystem. As example: Observing the only profitablity of Toys R Us as it collapsed would mislead you as to the very profitable exploit that KKR and Bain executed.
Its a great article though, lots of facts to ponder. Would love a view of the next layer up into financial arrangements in those Texas housing markets.
There is a specific group of people, matt stoller being the primary leader in the media, who are the "anti trust left". There is another specific group of people who are "abundance liberals" (dereck thompson and ezra klein being main media leaders) and there is an active competition inside the democratic/left of center politico-academic-policy-legal-media blob over prioritization of laypeoples attention and allegiance/belief which is in fact a finite resource and relatively zero sum between the two camps.
I mean, the article is responding specifically to a particular ideology... the antitrust left, so it makes sense.
The abundance vs anti abundance schism is internal on the left wing side of politics.
The author of this article was also one of the authors of the titular Abundance book which named the movement, so he’s not positioning himself as the other side of the “anti trust left”, he quite literally is the other side that that group is fighting with
It all makes sense when you take "abundance liberalism" for what it actually is: a rebranding of neoliberalism in support of establishment democrats. Its main goal is not to provide the democratic party with a new direction, but to defend the status quo against the populist left, incarnated by the likes of AOC and Mamdani.
It makes sense then, that they'd spend more time attacking the left than the right, as they realize where the existential threat to the current democratic party lies. Personally, I think it's good that they're afraid.
The Abundance movement is decidedly not pushing for the status quo. They are pushing for removing a good number of regulations on home building and zoning.
That is an active change
You misread my comment, I meant the status quo of the current democratic party leadership.
Whatever deregulation "abundance liberalism" pushes for, it will immediately be killed off or undone by the people that benefitted from those regulations. The democratic party is plagued by private interests (almost as much as the republicans), who very much do not want to see homes getting cheaper.
The establishment, through its neoliberalist direction, has shown that it has either no interest or is completely powerless to curb the growing inequalities and societal issues stemming from them. Only a fool would fall for it again, because it is rebranded from "neoliberalism" to "abundance liberalism". "Deregulation" has been the chief word in politics for 50 years, what makes you think it will lead to somthing any different this time?
Why do I see so many critiques of the abundance movement based on factional motives and ad hominem, and so little critique of the arguments they make?
If progressives want to expand government, government needs to be effective. Abundance liberalism is about learning from the mistakes of the past and making government better able to achieve to goals both liberals and progressives want.
If we're talking about factional infighting, leftists are "afraid" the neoliberals will offer a compelling path forward instead of pivoting to socialism, so they resist arguments that would otherwise be beneficial to their political goals.
Do you think this specific criticism of the “populist left” by the “abundance liberals” is valid though?
No, this guy (the writer of the article) has no idea what he’s talking about. I say this as someone isn’t even on the left.
He sets a false dichotomy to protect himself from criticism. Zoning/building codes being too strict and monopolies existing in that market aren’t incompatible.
It’s worth noting that there’s a lot of money behind this abundance movement or whatever, so that’s something to take into account when reading this stuff.
Truthfully, I don't. IMHO, abundance liberalism has a blind spot when it comes to the power of money in modern politics. We didn't stumble into a situation where buying a house requires an entire lifetime of work out of sheer bad luck. Some private interests greatly benefit from this situation and have enough power to keep things from changing.
Until we address this, and the abundance crowd doesn't want to, all of this is pointless bickering.
3 replies →