Bring Back Consequences
Everything sounds reasonable at the start of a sentence.
Engage the business community, lower taxes, deregulate innovation, of course people are going to vote for those things. All the consequences live on the other side of the comma: reduce worker protections, cut services, increase consumer risk.
The sooner we admit that most systems are zero sum, the sooner we can decide who the losers should be.
Empathy isn’t popular in America. Punishment is the national pastime. Facing a billion-dollar budget gap? Start by shaving off the $1 million set aside to explore the very idea of making the city more accessible. Lifting boxes in an Amazon warehouse instead of building practicing a union trade? Slap a tariff on Mexico! It won’t solve the problem, but it will make someone else suffer.
Liberals have avoided this — pushing the line that a rising tide lifts all ships. And it does! It just also floods the shoreline. We don’t get to choose whether there are consequences for our actions. We only get to choose how they’re distributed. And contrary to voting patterns, it does seem like an awful lot of Americans are ready for revenge to be served to the people who hurt them rather than the people who have less than them.
As I reshape my personality to be as annoying as possible over the next four years, I’m going to spend a lot of time finishing every inane and inarguable thought.
“I just wish we could see more women in leadership,” “Yes, definitely, men need to step aside to create parity! Will you be one of them?”
“Liberals need to grow up and bring business to the table.” “Totally, our biggest wins have come out of union negotiations. How else can we apply pressure to share in profits?”
“Can you believe those property taxes?" “Ugh, right?! We need to pass a graduated income tax so we can tax billionaires, not buildings. How much do you know about Ken Griffin?”
Some good things
No reason, none at all, just a reminder that robber baron George Pullman’s grave may or may not have steel and concrete reinforcements, but definitely does have a giant column on top to dissuade his laborers from digging up and desecrating his corpse. Fear is a powerful motivator!
Also apropos of nothing, this startup raised $4 million to help hospitals appeal the higher-than-normal volume of claims denials using AI. Honestly, it doesn’t have to be successful. The AI that denies claims is wrong 90% of the time, so just keep ping-ponging people’s lives back and forth. Perfect system, best in the world.
In the last gasps of Twitter, the above post and this thread both deliver some of the unique joys that make it sad to say goodbye. Especially enjoying this PDF of a proposed Pepsi rebrand, absolutely put together by a bunch of preschoolers wearing fake glasses to play business.
Love to see these two little babies fighting. The male ego got us here — maybe with enough drama it can get us out too?
Rebecca Solnit — always — after a catastrophe. “When people worry about crime when it is low, an economy when it is thriving and immigrants when they do much of the hard work that sustains that economy and commit fewer crimes than the native-born, the media has failed.”
At least we have AI ratting out the journalists who use it. Diabolical, like selling the school bully the wrong test answers.
Good news for fans of thrift stores and accessible HIV treatment: Howard Brown Health has agreed to pay $1.3 million to more than 50 employees who were laid off after voting to unionize. Woulda maybe been easier and cheaper to just negotiate with employees, and we wouldn’t have had to boycott The Brown Elephant.
This is why everyone who’s ever lived in Texas goes misty-eyed at the mention of H-E-B. A different way of doing business is possible. Also fresh tortillas, give us that, Bob Mariano!
This is an occasional newsletter to confirm that your boss is probably gaslighting you.