Basel Musharbash

When:

-4 multinationals dominate the development and production of seeds and pesticides.
-Single firms monopolize each of the domestic markets for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium fertilizers.
-5 companies control the nation’s meat and poultry industries.

The Menace of Prosperity Upends entrenched thinking about cities, demonstrating how urban economies are defined—or constrained—by the fiscal imagination of policymakers, activists, and residents.   Many local policymakers mak...

“If #zohran wins..."The Menace of Prosperity" — a tremendous urban history and storehouse of inspiring precedents and ideas — is going to be required reading in the coming years”-
@petedavis.bsky.social, founder of the @Democracy Policy Network

Order today.

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Lina Khan on stage at the podium

"We have an economy where a handful of modern-day robber barons wield extraordinary power. They hold enormous control over our paychecks, our bills, our time, and our futures.

...But the good news is that nothing about any of this is inevitable." - Lina Khan

Did I just see Lina Khan walk out to Warren G's "Regualte" at the Zohran rally?? the greatest of all time

Anna ... how many times have you wat–– [disappeared]

Come work with me, pals! #hiring

Just learned a lot about the egg cartel. Big egg is worth the read.

Come work with me, pals! #hiring

Lmao thank you 🙏

Zuckerberg built a hot-or-not "Facemash" the year before Facebook, he's still in charge of Meta and being a multibillionaire certainly doesn't increase the chances of any sort of growing up. He was always a creep, he just has more platforms now.

via @proptermalone.bsky.social @basel.bsky.social

Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man Exclusive: Instagram pictures of girls as young as 13 were posted to promote Threads site ‘as bait’, campaigner says

“Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting.”

Meta has 100% stopped even *pretending* not to be astoundingly evil.

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

had to read the article to understand wtf was going on here which is that Meta is literally feeding Instagram pictures parents took of their teenage daughters to middle aged men as ads for Threads

It adds to the gravity of the situation.

The senate hearings were spurred by Basel’s reporting earlier this year.

Thank you, my friend 🙏🙏🙏

Abundance Bros were big mad at @basel.bsky.social a few weeks ago.

Can’t help but note that while they’ve been busy carrying water for kleptocracy, Basel is literally testifying against the monopolization & enshittification of firetrucks.

You read that right.

www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/u...

Today, during a subcommittee hearing overseeing disaster management, I addressed the manufacturers of fire equipment and trucks.

Big manufacturers must answer for why fire departments are waiting too long and paying too much for the trucks they need. 1/2

The collusion seems to include providing the Russian authorities with materials (from their confidential asylum applications!) used to send forcibly repatriated dissidents to prison. The depth of betrayal here is beyond words.

MAGA populists call for holy war against Big Tech Butlerian jihad from an unlikely quarter.

At NatCon, there were two topics dominating everyone’s discussions: the imminent end of the right’s support of Israel — and the existential threat that technology posed to Western civilization.

I wrote about the second discussion.

www.theverge.com/politics/773...

Thanks, Ennie! Miss ya!

Oh hey! Look who’s testifying at their first congressional hearing next week! 😄

Ok, now that I have thought about it a little more, I actually don’t disagree with Max lol

SpaceX Gets Billions From the Government. It Gives Little to Nothing Back in Taxes.

Elon Musk's SpaceX "has received billions of dollars in federal contracts over its more than two-decade existence. But SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to."
www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/t...

lolol this is the way (while I disagree with Max, bagels override all disagreements)

An Abundance of Sleaze: How a Beltway Brain Trust Sells Oligarchy to Liberals How did a debate over housing become a call to end the anti-monopoly movement? Abundance co-author Derek Thompson used slimy tactics to protect wealth and power in America. It's worth examining how.

The Abundance/Effective Altruist crowd doesnt care about the role of finance in housing. In fact, they don’t even want to examine the role of finance within…the Federal Reserve! www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-abundan...

When the Federal Reserve jacks up mortgage rates, credit card rates, and auto loan rates on millions of Americans, the federal government literally does not count that crushing inflation as inflation.

www.thebignewsletter.com/p/strikes-an...

Taking a step back, it’s important to see that populism on the right just doesn’t fit, because at heart today's GOP is still the party of Reagan scammers, or George W. Bush confidence men. What we have, instead, is some populist discourse, with the goal of establishing a hierarchical system based on the whims of Trump and the billionaires he bosses around. Our old models, our old language, our old ways of thinking, our old political leaders, just cannot grapple with the oligarchy in which we increasingly find ourselves, and the Amway-style rhetoric and money-drenched politics we are seeing. We have at least three and a half more years of this kind of behavior to come, and a deeply feeble opposition party. It’s not fun to keep looking out the window at the cliff towards which we are headed. That said, there’s a lot of opportunity to rethink our institutions and the first principles on which they are based, and we definitely need to do that.

This piece from Matt Stoller on the shape of the new Oligarchy in the US is interesting - the basic claim is that you have the general post-Reagan scam artistry associated with the GOP tied to a populist personality cult and the result is just bizarre.

www.thebignewsletter.com/p/into-the-a...

An Abundance of Sleaze: How a Beltway Brain Trust Sells Oligarchy to Liberals How did a debate over housing become a call to end the anti-monopoly movement? Abundance co-author Derek Thompson used slimy tactics to protect wealth and power in America. It's worth examining how.

Quite the broadside from Stoller against the Abundance crowd, and I had a bit of a jumpscare to see effective altruism return to the Discourse too. There's an underlying point about to be made, like, what sort of things fool what sort of people.

www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-abundan...

Well, you know the old saying — first they call your craycray, then . . .

You stan, I stan, we all stan the one and only @bhighsmith.bsky.social :)