Monthly Archives: July 2024

Uber is a Poor Replacement for Utopia

Tags:Complex Systems, Electoral Intrigues, Futuristics, Wealth

Two items of interest passed through my feeds this week. The first is the podcast Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz released to explain why they are endorsing Trump for president. The second is an evocative and viral internet advertisement for careersbuilttolast.com, a slick recruiting website trying to attract young workers to production lines in the maritime industrial base.  If you have not seen the ad yet, please watch it now:

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Patronage vs. Constituent Parties (Or Why Republican Party Leaders Matter More Than Democratic Ones)

Tags:Bargaining and Balancing, By The People, Electoral Intrigues, History, The Presidency

The Republican and Democratic parties are not the same: power flows differently within them. The two big political news items of this week—the happenings of the Republican National Convention and the desperate attempts of many Democrats to replace their candidate before their own convention next month—reflect these asymmetries. Nevertheless, many discussions of American politics assume that that the structures and operational norms of the two parties are the same. If these party differences were more widely recognized, I suspect we would see fewer evangelicals frustrated with their limited influence over the GOP party platform, fewer journalists shocked with J.D. Vance’s journey from never-Trump land to MAGA-maximalism, and greater alarm among centrist Democrats about the longer-term influence that the Palestine protests will have on the contours of their coalition.

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