Bullet Points: "We're in Danger" edition

Substack's new funding round, doubting Epstein drama amounts to much, and NYT columnists should shut up about Mamdani.

Just a few things I need to get off my chest before the week is over…

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(1) Congratulations to Substack on their Series C funding round. The company now has over a $1 billion valuation. Casey Newton has the details on what this likely means for the company and its product line. Tl;DR, for unmonetized newsletter writers like myself:

The underly finances of Substack’s core product do not scale well at all. As Casey puts it:

That business has never entirely made sense to me. The company takes a 10 percent cut of subscription revenue, meaning that the more your business grows, the worse a bargain it is for you. (The level of service you get paying the company $1,000 a year is more or less the same as it is if you pay it $50,000 a year.)

The higher the valuation, the greater the investor pressure to juice those numbers somehow. Substack is already warming up to adding programmatic advertising to newsletters. We’ll see how it goes, but I suspect newsletters like this one are going to face serious headwinds. I’m a Substack free-rider. One way or another, they’re probably going to try to make money off of my writing. And once they start trying to squeeze it for revenues, they’ll probably just keep squeezing.

But that all sets up a decision for later. For now, I’ll just say that the new funding round has a real <ominous clouds gather> vibe.

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(2) Look, I’m enjoying the MAGA freakout over Donald Trump’s Jeffrey Epstein ties as much as anyone. But I think it will ultimately amount to nothing. This isn’t the wedge issue that cracks the MAGA coalition. It’s just content.

Two reasons why:

-I don’t think they actually care about child sex trafficking. Remember when we were <this close> to Matt Gaetz as Attorney General? Remember Roy Moore? Donald Trump’s longtime association with Jeffrey Epstein has never been a secret. The MAGA base cares about performative dominance. They think the Epstein files are full of Democrats. They aren’t going to abandon their king over this.

-What they do care about is farming outrage. The Epstein files drive attention right now. And every rightwing influencer is religiously devoted to feeding the algorithm whatever it asks for.

The intra-MAGA drama is akin to the fanbase of a hit show, loudly griping about the season 6 finale online. It’s like an outraged fanbase, insisting they are done with this team for good now after a disappointing draft pick.

It’s all performative. None of it has staying power. In the long term, none of it is real.

Maybe I’m wrong. It would be fun to be wrong. But I doubt it. Let’s temper our expectations a bit.

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(3) I’ve resisted writing about Zohran Mamdani because I haven’t lived in New York since 2012 and I generally think there are enough New Yorkers talking about New York politics. But, I do want to make one point about the rich-people-freakout response he has faced.

Bret Stephens wrote about Mamdani this week. And the nice thing about Mr. Stephens is that he is so rarely subtle. You can always rely on him to say the quite part loud.

Stephens’s main complaint seems to be stylistic. Zohran Mamdani demonizes the billionaire-class. And this, in Bret’s mind, is deadly for the city of New York: “Roughly 50 percent of New York City’s income taxes are paid by the top 2 percent of earners, who already labor under one of the highest city and state tax burdens in the country (15.9 percent in 2022). When New Yorkers pack up and leave, they take billions in taxable income with them.”

He sounds a lot like Bill Ackman, who rage-tweeted last month that “the ability for NYC to offer services for the poor and needy, let alone the average New Yorker, is entirely dependent on NYC being a business-friendly environment and a place where wealthy residents are willing to spend 183 days and assume the associated tax burden.”

I think it’s worth spelling out the political logic of their reasoning here:

-We spent decades letting the ultra-wealthy get ultra-wealthier.

-They have acquired extraordinary political power as a result.

-…Ergo, we ought to be obsequious to the ultra-wealthy. Just imagine the consequences if we don't cater to their interests!

This is a theory of politics that treats rich people as better, wiser, and more important than the rest of us. Stephens and Ackman and their peers are genuinely astonished that New Yorkers would dare to select someone the billionaires do not approve of.

It isn’t really debatable that New York has an ultra-wealthy class that could indeed leave for a different zip code if they wanted to. Mamdani, if elected, is going to face entrenched interests that create a lot of hurdles to implementing his agenda. Power yields nothing without a fight.

The question is whether the power of the ultra-wealthy is good or bad. Stephens and Ackman and company are functionally saying, “this level of extraordinary wealth inequality is good. We should maintain it.” This is part of a broader ideological project (which I’ve written about before). In its simplest form, the ideology states that there is a social order, and it is good and right. People ought to know their place and respect it goddammit.

It is the ideology of the New York Times and the Washington Post. It’s also the ideology of the tech billionaires and finance bros. It is anti-democratic in orientation, but only at the margins It is amenable to democracy, so long as the mass public will listen to their betters.

The most apparent flaw in this worldview becomes evident when we pay attention to these supposed “betters” themselves. Stephens is a fool. Ackman a clown. They did not rise through the social order based on merit or generalizable skill. They do not know better than the rest of us. A society designed to serve the will and the whims of their class interests is not a society well-designed at all.

I’ve written before about “Huxley’s Electorate” — the idea, essentially, that what makes Democracy such a valuable form of government is its resilience. Democracy is a great deal for political and economic elites, because it creates a pressure release valve that keeps that mass public in line.

But Democracy is only resilient to the extent that these elites keep the subtext as subtext. You’re supposed to say “I dunno about these policy proposals… I think they might have some unintended consequences.” You aren’t supposed to say “no one should be elected unless the billionaires have provided their blessing.” (Be more subtle, Bret!)

The wise thing for Bret Stephens and Bill Ackman and the New York Times editorial board to do is shut the hell up. Sometimes the public is going to side with a mayoral candidate who doesn’t blow smoke up billionaires’ asses. That isn’t a crisis of Democracy. It’s kind of the point. If you want elected officials to be nicer to billionaires, then try having the billionaires’ hand-picked elected officials govern better.

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(4) Colbert has been canceled, because CBS is owned by Paramount and Paramount needs federal approval to be sold to the son of a rightwing tech billionaire. This is as bad as it seems.

Also, the crypto industry just got the congressional legislation it wanted. This will end poorly for everyone. the scammers bought a government. They’ll enrich themselves until it all falls apart. It isn’t even subtle any longer.

There still aren’t any use-cases for Bitcoin beyond speculative gambling and crime. I guess we’re just going to have a gambling, speculation, and crime-based economy for awhile. What a stupid way to run an economy.

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(5) I’ve found myself writing less about political events, because I am just constantly rendered speechless. We have a secret police and concentration camps now. We are demolishing our scientific and educational institutions. All of it is plainly illegal, right up until the Supreme Court again decides 6-3 that “eh, it’s fine so long as Trump is doing it.”

Every day brings a fresh horror.

I’ll write more when I find the words. And in the meantime, I’m going to try to share more pieces by people who are finding the words when I can’t.

Shoshana Groom (my niece) recently launched a substack. She’s a hell of a writer, and is speaking up where I don’t find the words. Check out her first piece: “The United States is using sexual violence as a political weapon. What are we going to do about it?”

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