alt Hacker NewsI just couldn't keep reading with the constant "antitrust left" being refered to on every sentence.
The issue, is that for me, the reader, it framed the piece as the author seemingly positioning themselves as the "the other side", the one that knows best and isn't those "antitrust left". It felt like it was creating a strawman and was engaging in tribal signaling.
And when you consider the rest of the piece was them claiming they called the sources, and that the sources said that the "antitrust left" had misquoted them and misrepresented their findings, but the author somehow is this unbiased truth, and definitely really for real called the the sources and didn't at all misconstrue or anything, no they wouldn't do that, unlike the "antitrust left".
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It's a shame to let two words color your opinion on an entire piece like that; I found it to be really compelling.
Your last paragraph is a bit confusing; is it your position that Derek's lying? Which quote did you think was inaccurate? Or are you specifically concerned with his rhetoric?
Yeah this article treats it like an either/or situation where monopoly's somehow make it so regulations aren't the issue instead of what most of the monopoly takes say which is that monopoly builders make the situation worse and combine with the other problems.
There is a specific group of people, matt stoller being the primary leader in the media, who are the "anti trust left". There is another specific group of people who are "abundance liberals" (dereck thompson and ezra klein being main media leaders) and there is an active competition inside the democratic/left of center politico-academic-policy-legal-media blob over prioritization of laypeoples attention and allegiance/belief which is in fact a finite resource and relatively zero sum between the two camps.
I sense the labelling is a tell of sorts. As to the critique, I think the focus on homebuilder corporate profits leaves out important parts of the ecosystem. As example: Observing the only profitablity of Toys R Us as it collapsed would mislead you as to the very profitable exploit that KKR and Bain executed.
Its a great article though, lots of facts to ponder. Would love a view of the next layer up into financial arrangements in those Texas housing markets.
I watched an interview with both the authors. They read as both left leaning but self critical of the regulations the left has put in place. It seemed like this leftist identity is part of the story so maybe that is why it is mentioned so much.
The abundance vs anti abundance schism is internal on the left wing side of politics.
The author of this article was also one of the authors of the titular Abundance book which named the movement, so he’s not positioning himself as the other side of the “anti trust left”, he quite literally is the other side that that group is fighting with
I mean, the article is responding specifically to a particular ideology... the antitrust left, so it makes sense.
It all makes sense when you take "abundance liberalism" for what it actually is: a rebranding of neoliberalism in support of establishment democrats. Its main goal is not to provide the democratic party with a new direction, but to defend the status quo against the populist left, incarnated by the likes of AOC and Mamdani.
It makes sense then, that they'd spend more time attacking the left than the right, as they realize where the existential threat to the current democratic party lies. Personally, I think it's good that they're afraid.
I'm about as far left as you can be, as a syndicalist anarchist, and I definitely perceived a bit of what you described. But I'm not super worried about it because he didn't say "the left", but rather a specific lefty position.
But also, the left isn't uniform on housing policy. Some folks want anti trust and limited capital ownership. Some folks want to de commodify housing. Some folks want all housing to be government built and owned. The left is a very diverse place (and the joke is no one hates leftists more than other leftists).