Long thread/4
Financiers who back Trump know that they can afford to transport their daughters, wives, mistresses and the housekeepers, babysitters and teenagers they impregnate across state lines (or national borders) to get an abortion should the need arise. Their participation in Maga was a bet that after victory was attained, the base could be made to settle for performative cruelty against people other than them:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how-the-sausage-gets-made/#governing-is-harder
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Long thread/5
The finance sector is the critical faction in Maga, because the financialized ideal is to accumulate wealth and power without exposure to any real-world risks. As Doug Rushkoff writes in Survival of the Richest, the finance move is to "go meta" - don't drive a taxi, buy a medallion and rent it to a taxi driver. Don't buy a medallion, start a rideshare company. Don't start a rideshare company, invest in a rideshare company.
5/
Long thread/6
Don't invest in a rideshare company, buy options to invest in a rideshare company:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn
Crypto is as meta as it gets, so no wonder crypto bros are all-in on Trump, and no wonder Trump is all-in on crypto.
6/
Long thread/7
As Hamilton Nolan writes:
Crypto coins... are pure speculative baubles, endowed with value only to the extent that you can convince another person to pay you more for them than you paid. They are a claim on nothing. They are the grandest embodiment of Greater Fool Theory ever invented by mankind.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/scams-and-bribery-are-becoming-the
Trump's tariffs are blowing up the economy and wiping out the agricultural sector.
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Long thread/8
All those rural, Christmas-voting turkeys are getting it in the neck:
https://kdwalmsley.substack.com/p/tariffs-wiping-out-american-farmers
Trump's answer to this is to fire the government statisticians and replace them with work-for-hire fiction hacks who'll publish whatever numbers he tells them to:
https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2025-08-13-cooking-inflation-jobs-numbers-trump-bls/
You'd think that this would worry the finance sector, but fake numbers are actually good for finance, provided you're on the right side of them.
8/
Long thread/9
Plenty of people got dynastically rich off of the fake numbers that propped up the pre-2008 housing bubble and the pre-2001 dotcom bubble. Those same people - and their ideological heirs - are now all-in on AI. It's impossible to overstate how structurally important AI is to the US economy. AI bubble companies now account for the value of *35% of the US stock market*:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/
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Long thread/10
The instant that bubble pops, the US economy gets a 35% amputation. It's no surprise that, under Trump, the FTC and DoJ have brought the Biden administration's antitrust enforcement against Big Tech to a screeching halt:
https://www.citizen.org/article/deleting-enforcement-trump-big-tech-billion-report/
Nothing would be worse for the AI bubble than antitrust and securities-law enforcement.
10/
Long thread/11
Companies that cook their balance sheets and suck up hundreds of billions in investment capital cannot function in a world with an orderly market system overseen by publicly accountable referees charged with keeping everyday people from having their life's savings stolen.
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Long thread/12
And indeed, Trump's enforcers are running away from their duties, as fast as they can. The latest wheeze is to change the rules so that you can "invest" your retirement savings in cryptocurrency and private equity funds (two tired old swindles whose ropers are scraping the barrel looking for new marks):
https://prospect.org/power/2025-06-13-retirement-crisis-401k-private-equity-scrambled/
Not that AI is much better. AI is hemorrhaging money and bringing in pennies:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-a-money-trap/
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Long thread/13
And things are looking grimmer for AI by the day. It's not just that Openai's latest, "fifth-generation" model was such a spectacular flop that they've been forced to bring back the old version. Far more important is the utter uselessness of AI as a way of realizing cost-savings for the companies that try it:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/business/ai-business-payoff-lags.html?unlocked_article_code=1.d08.Re3i.TDnOyE2FgyNJ&smid=url-share
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Long thread/14
After all, AI is implicitly a bet on firing workers. The hundreds of billions in investment, the trillions in valuation - these can't be realized by merely making workers' jobs easier or more satisfying. AI isn't a bet on making radiologists better at diagnosing solid-mass lung tumors: it's a bet on firing nearly all the radiologists and using the remainder to be "humans in the loop" for AI, in order to absorb the blame when you die of cancer.
14/
Long thread/15
There are plenty of radiologists who might welcome AI as a tool they use in their workflow - but their bosses aren't about to hand over vast fortunes just to make those workers happier.
This is why AI users often sound like they're using totally different technologies. Workers who get to decide whether and how to incorporate AI into their jobs are doubtless finding lots of utility and delight from the new tool. These workers are "centaurs" - people assisted by machines.
15/
Long thread/16
The workers who describe their on-the-job AI as a hellish monstrosity are being ordered to use AI, in workplaces where mass firings have terrified the survivors, who are told they must use the AI to make up for their jobless former colleagues. They are reverse-centaurs: machines assisted by human workers:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/27/rancid-vibe-coding/#class-war
There is no way that AI can be worth 35% of the economy if all it does is produce some happy centaurs.
16/
Long thread/16
@pluralistic@mamot.fr This is precisely the opposite of what I see, where companies do not want to provide devs AI tools, and the devs want to use them. Many are spending their own money to get access to AI tools.
Long thread/17
The only way that 35% bet pays off is if half the workers get fired and replaced by AI, which is a thing that AI pitchmen are promising, to the letter (a letter that is credulously repeated by the dutiful stenographers of the press):
https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/blog/dario-amodei-ai-entry-level-jobs
The problem is that when businesses fire a bunch of workers and replace them with AI, they don't get the promised savings.
17/
Long thread/18
Instead, they end up with a system that's so broken that all the wage savings are incinerated by the cost of making good on the AI's failures.
But for Maga's finance wing, this is all OK. They're going meta. Don't hire workers, hire AI. Don't hire AI, make AI. Don't make AI, invest in AI.
18/
Long thread/18
Instead, they end up with a system that's so broken that all the wage savings are incinerated by the cost of making good on the AI's failures.
But for Maga's finance wing, this is all OK. They're going meta. Don't hire workers, hire AI. Don't hire AI, make AI. Don't make AI, invest in AI.
18/
Long thread/19
So long as the number keeps going up, finance wins, even if that's only because every structurally important firm in America is being thimblerigged into filling their walls with AI-powered, immortal asbestos that is destined to transform their firms into Superfund sites.
They're betting that when the bubble finally bursts, that they will have become too big to fail, and will thus be in for the bailouts that rescued the finance sector in 2008.
19/
Long thread/19
So long as the number keeps going up, finance wins, even if that's only because every structurally important firm in America is being thimblerigged into filling their walls with AI-powered, immortal asbestos that is destined to transform their firms into Superfund sites.
They're betting that when the bubble finally bursts, that they will have become too big to fail, and will thus be in for the bailouts that rescued the finance sector in 2008.
19/
Long thread/20
They think that so long as they curry favor with Trump, he'll make sure they're all OK, because they are the people the law protects, but does not bind.
This is a pretty good bet. Trump's a gangster capitalist, and fascists love a "dual state" - a system where the law is followed to the letter, except when it suits someone with the protection of the ruling clique to wipe their ass with it:
https://archive.ph/8T8of
20/
Long thread/20
They think that so long as they curry favor with Trump, he'll make sure they're all OK, because they are the people the law protects, but does not bind.
This is a pretty good bet. Trump's a gangster capitalist, and fascists love a "dual state" - a system where the law is followed to the letter, except when it suits someone with the protection of the ruling clique to wipe their ass with it:
https://archive.ph/8T8of
20/
Long thread/21
And bailouts for finance crooks are a bipartisan consensus. Remember, it was Obama, not Bush, who took his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's advice to allow the bailed-out banks to steal their borrowers homes and trigger the foreclosure crisis, because this would "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_made_millions_suffer_tim_geithners_sorry_legacy_on_housing/
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Long thread/21
And bailouts for finance crooks are a bipartisan consensus. Remember, it was Obama, not Bush, who took his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's advice to allow the bailed-out banks to steal their borrowers homes and trigger the foreclosure crisis, because this would "foam the runways" for the crashing banks:
https://www.salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_made_millions_suffer_tim_geithners_sorry_legacy_on_housing/
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Long thread/22
The Obama wing of the party insists that they're the responsible adults in the room, the ones that will govern wisely and hold their gigadonors to account when they wreck the economy. They tell us Zohran Mamdani is - despite all evidence to the contrary - too unpopular to win an election:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting
22/
Long thread/22
The Obama wing of the party insists that they're the responsible adults in the room, the ones that will govern wisely and hold their gigadonors to account when they wreck the economy. They tell us Zohran Mamdani is - despite all evidence to the contrary - too unpopular to win an election:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/28/mamdani/#trustbusting
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Long thread/23
They ratfucked Katie Porter, one of finance's most savage and talented opponents, teaming up with the crypto-bros who are Maga's bagmen. Joke's on them, because it looks like Porter is gonna be California's next governor:
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-08-13-establishment-struggles-control-california-governors-race/
(I donated $100 I can't afford to her campaign; maybe you will donate, too?)
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/kpg_web
23/
Long thread/23
They ratfucked Katie Porter, one of finance's most savage and talented opponents, teaming up with the crypto-bros who are Maga's bagmen. Joke's on them, because it looks like Porter is gonna be California's next governor:
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-08-13-establishment-struggles-control-california-governors-race/
(I donated $100 I can't afford to her campaign; maybe you will donate, too?)
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/kpg_web
23/
Long thread/24
Maga's finance wing are convinced that the game is rigged in their favor - heads they win and the law protects them, tails we lose and the law binds us. But if there's one thing we know about gangster capitalism, it's that the capo isn't shy about seizing the fortunes of his various underbosses when the mood suits him. One day he's demanding that you quit your job as CEO, the next day he imposes a 15% tax on your products:
https://www.firstpost.com/world/trump-meets-intel-chief-calls-him-a-success-days-after-demanding-his-resignation-13923838.html
24/
Long thread/24
Maga's finance wing are convinced that the game is rigged in their favor - heads they win and the law protects them, tails we lose and the law binds us. But if there's one thing we know about gangster capitalism, it's that the capo isn't shy about seizing the fortunes of his various underbosses when the mood suits him. One day he's demanding that you quit your job as CEO, the next day he imposes a 15% tax on your products:
https://www.firstpost.com/world/trump-meets-intel-chief-calls-him-a-success-days-after-demanding-his-resignation-13923838.html
24/
Long thread/25
You can bet your ass that if it looks like Trump is gonna lose his grip on power, they'll come sleazing over the Democrats, demanding the defenstration of Mamdani, Porter, and anyone who wants a habitable and just world, rather than a system designed to convert the planet's resources to something that can be sequestered in a luxury bunker or on a private island.
25/
Long thread/25
You can bet your ass that if it looks like Trump is gonna lose his grip on power, they'll come sleazing over the Democrats, demanding the defenstration of Mamdani, Porter, and anyone who wants a habitable and just world, rather than a system designed to convert the planet's resources to something that can be sequestered in a luxury bunker or on a private island.
25/
Long thread/26
Because for all that they moan about "wokeness," they wouldn't want their kids to have to tolerate a shitty boss; they wouldn't want their kids to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. They wanna live out their cuckold fantasies in peace:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/02/stephen-miller-wife-musk/
They don't have any problem with living in a world where there's lip service to social values and Pricewaterhousecooper has a cringe Pride parade float.
26/
Long thread/26
Because for all that they moan about "wokeness," they wouldn't want their kids to have to tolerate a shitty boss; they wouldn't want their kids to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. They wanna live out their cuckold fantasies in peace:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2025/06/02/stephen-miller-wife-musk/
They don't have any problem with living in a world where there's lip service to social values and Pricewaterhousecooper has a cringe Pride parade float.
26/
Long thread/eof
They'll happily save a couple bucks on the nanny's abortion by going down to the corner Planned Parenthood rather than flying her to Toronto on the private jet. All that performative cruelty was just a shuck to get some of the dumber surviving turkeys to pull the lever for Christmas. So long as they can live in a world where the law protects them, but does not bind them, they're happy as pigs in shit.
eof/
Long thread/eof
They'll happily save a couple bucks on the nanny's abortion by going down to the corner Planned Parenthood rather than flying her to Toronto on the private jet. All that performative cruelty was just a shuck to get some of the dumber surviving turkeys to pull the lever for Christmas. So long as they can live in a world where the law protects them, but does not bind them, they're happy as pigs in shit.
eof/
Cory Doctorow
