I think the strongest case for antitrust enforcement is with regards to cases like apple's app store (and to a lesser extent google's). These endanger not just competition but also free speech as well since the platforms decide what is allowed. One could argue Amazon is actually a similar instance.
I'd contrast that with mergers, which think that is the absolute worst place for anti-trust because it gives the administration so much essentially discretionary power they can use to extract favors. Trump is brazen but I'm sure companies have always tried to avoid offending the people deciding their mergers.
Moreover, the standard shouldn't look at how market power was gained. It shouldn't matter if you developed that power by growth or merger. And that way we can leave it up to courts.
I'm not a big believer in antitrust generally but I think there is a decent argument that amazon should be forced to divest its own products. The market Amazon monopolizes is to home supply chain delivery and it is a natural Monopoly. Walmart tries but it just can't get you so much variety so quickly.
As with Microsoft and Excel the concern is illegal tieing -- you want to get the benefit of the natural supply chain monopoly Amazon has you have to purchase their kit. Well not quite have to but the point is that they have positive incentive not to give truly useful comparisons that might make their options look worse.
Currently ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I do worry it could become a bigger issue.
You wrote "I’d urge everyone to remember that we actually had this debate in the 2024 cycle. Simon Rosenberg got a lot of traction with his Hopium Chronicles Substack, which leaned heavily on special elections and the argument that we should trust actual voting behavior over surveys."
Matt, unfortunately your comments on special elections in the period between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections are not reality-based. Maybe you were led astray by fantasies invented by someone else, but that's no excuse for failing to fact check. I suggest that you redo this part of your analysis after fact checking. I can help with that - specifically with special elections for state legislative seats.
state legislative special elections in 2021 - 3 seats flipped R to D, 3 flipped D to R, NO NET CHANGE
then in 2022 - 1 seat flipped R to D, 1 flipped D to R, NO NET CHANGE
then in 2023 - 2 seats flipped R to D, 2 flipped D to R, NO NET CHANGE
then in 2024 (before the November election *) - 2 seats flipped R to D, 1 flipped D to R, D GAIN +1
Thus in the entire period between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, Democrats had a net gain of exactly ONE seat in state legislative special elections. (Democrats gained two more seats in special elections held concurrently with the November 2024 general election, but you and Mr. Rosenberg didn't know that would happen before the election was held.)
Contrast that with more recent results
in 2025 - 8 seats flipped R to D, 0 D to R (additional notes on 2025: Excluding elections affected by redistricting, 5 seats flipped R to D. Unusually, 4 of those 5 flips were state senate seats, which are more important that state house seats.)
in 2026 so far - 4 seats flipped R to D, 0 D to R
While special elections are far from the only indicator of voter preferences between general elections, the results certainly reinforce claims that the current political environment is unfavorable for Republicans.
Thank you for your comments on ties. A suit without a tie just looks like you forgot your tie and is incomplete. If you don't want to wear a tie don't wear a suit. Also, always wear socks with a suit and don't wear sneakers.
I could really use an in-depth California governor's race article before I have to vote. I appreciate knowing that Matt likes Mahan, since I definitely wasn't looking at him before, though I do think it's a bit dubious to run for governor when you haven't even served a full term as mayor. I really don't feel like the state has been well-served with Newsom partly because he's always been looking at the next job.
>I hope that Mamdani helps spark a “wear a damn tie” revival among younger politicians because, fundamentally, if you’re wearing a suit, you should wear a tie.
On one hand, I agree. On the other, if I button my collar two days in a row my skin will stage a coup. And no, it doesn't matter what size neck my shirt has or how well it fits. Maybe there is a fabric out there that this wouldn't happen with, but I've never found it.
What is the attraction of Matt Mahan? I don’t get it.
My only strong feelings so far are that it’s a shame Betty Yee never stood a chance, and that I would vote for almost any other Democrat to not have to listen to Katie Porter for four years
Yglesias' pro-tie tie take is genuinely surprising to me. I enjoy wearing ties for the self-expressive pop of color, but I often deliberately forgo them as deference to prevailing aesthetics - I want to look like a sharp academic giving a TED talk rather than a high-schooler on his way to his first big job interview. But Yglesias' seems to think people's personal dislike of ties prevents them from looking stylish and professional.
For academia, it depends a lot on your subject. Mathematicians don’t look serious if they’re wearing anything fancier than t shirt and jeans. French literature professors need to be stylish, but not a suit. Business or medicine goes for a suit. Poorly fitting if you’re an engineer.
I'm disappointed with Matt's answer to City of Trees' question (If you were born in America at any time in the past, what views would you hold that are different/contradictory to the ones you do hold?)
Matt Y very conveniently answers that he would have been on the right side of the issues. Of course he would have been against slavery if he had lived in 1850s America!
It's easy to look back and say, Oh, of course I would have been different from those people back then, they were horrible!
So here's a follow-up question for Matt: Are you an ethical vegetarian, or do you at least strive to limit your meat consumption for ethical reasons?
Imagine this conversation taking place in 2100s America (assuming there's been no catastrophic collapse of society due to either nuclear war or rogue AI):
"Mom, is it true that Americans in the past, like back in the 2020s, used to kill animals for food?"
"Yes, Son, it's true."
"But they didn't just kill them, I've been reading this book about it, they used to keep animals in really horrible conditions, like, in tiny crates or cages, and they would cut off chickens' beaks and pigs' tails without any painkillers and stuff!"
"Yes, Son, I'm sorry to say, it's all true."
"This is terrible! How could they have been so evil? I've read other books from the time, and they, or at least some of them, were really big on empathy, didn't they realize that animals are living beings that also want to be happy and not to suffer?"
"Son, I know it's hard to understand. But think about it this way. I can go to the grocery store and buy Impossible 3.0 steak that's made with plants and tastes identical to how real meat would have tasted and is supplemented to have the same nutritional profile as real meat. The people in 2020 didn't have that option. If they wanted something that tasted like and had the same nutritional content as meat, they had no choice but to kill an animal for food."
"But Mom, they didn't have to kill animals to survive, did they? I know there were ethical vegetarians back then, like that one guy, I saw his old blog posts from the 2020s... what's his name... oh yeah, Matt Yglesias. He told his readers that it is totally possible to have a healthy vegetarian diet. Even when you don't have Impossible 3.0 meat."
"Wow, you've been really nerding out about this! That's my boy! Yes, you're right. Matt Yglesias... now there's a classic old thinker for you... he did say those things. But even his regular readers, those who liked him and mostly agreed with him, got really angry when he tried to convince them not to eat meat. People really liked meat back then, you see."
"So you're saying people valued eating something tasty over refusing to raise and kill millions of animals in horrible conditions? Man, the people of the 2020s really sucked."
I just wouldn't have picked that question, because it's inherently impossible to answer. It's like asking what Babe Ruth's batting average today would be if you took him and gave him modern MLB training and conditioning and stuck him in today's MLB. The problem is ill-posed, in the formal sense of that term. It's not possible to vary the background social conditions in some defined way and have that mechanically and predictably produce a different set of Yglesias Thoughts.
He should have answered my question about the Supreme Court instead...
Can’t resist weighing in on the California politics takes. For anyone who is eligible to vote in the 11th Congressional District election I would just point out that Scott Wiener has been an unusually effective state legislator. He just doesn’t give up and keeps working on his issues with a skill and determination that set him apart. He is exactly who you would want representing you in Congress if you share his general position (which is progressive even in California and only considered “moderate” in SF). I also think Mahan is the best candidate and the whole purpose of the jungle primary was to give the minority party voters more influence on who gets elected but it seems very difficult to actually persuade a critical number of Republican voters to vote for Mahan because he is their best option for some moderation. And it’s tricky to pull it off without alienating all the left of center voters but I still have a smidgen of hope. It’s also crazy to me that the Trump endorsed candidate has a posh British accent and used to work for David Cameron. Strange way to celebrate 250 years of declaring our independence from Britain.
Do Americans know that Steve Hilton was an adviser to David Cameron who was so weird that they added a character to a British satirical TV show specifically intended to make fun of him?
This character was Stewart Pearson, played by Vincent Franklin, and the show was The Thick Of It, in (he was added in 2007, and played a major role in the 2012 fourth series that was set after the arrival of the Conservatives in government)
TIL! I do wonder if he'll start falling in the polls once more people hear his voice and realize he has a British accent. Especially disconcerting to his Republican electorate.
I hate when the 2016 election comes up. People (even people here) can't discuss it because they let their irrational antipathy toward Hillary Clinton color their judgment.
Clinton did not run a bad campaign. People who run bad campaigns **don't** win the popular vote. What she did run was a spectacularly unlucky campaign, in that she did just poorly enough in exactly the right states to deny her a majority in the Electoral College. And while it was her campaign and the buck stops with her, no presidential candidate wakes up in the morning and says "I think we'll campaign in Wisconsin today." They have a team of strategists who make those decisions well in advance.
The 2016 election could easily have gone the other way. But them's the breaks.
I am totally torn on the CA governors race. Mahan is my top candidate, but he doesn't seem to have a realistic shot. It does seem like Steyer has more defined plans to boost housing supply than Becerra. So in expected value terms, Im thinking of voting for Steyer.
I want Mahan to win but will wait to vote until June 2 to see if he is in with a shot. If not, I think I'll go with Becerra: he actually has executive and governing experience. While Steyer may have better policy positions, I don't think he's demonstrated the relevant skill set as much. I also am wary that he had the gall to run for president in 2020 with such a low profile - that's a sign of too much hubris (see also: Swalwell, Eric).
None of it is wrong, but the main reason housing is expensive is land use and permitting, and he doesn't say anything about land use and only something mealy mouthed about building codes.
I think the strongest case for antitrust enforcement is with regards to cases like apple's app store (and to a lesser extent google's). These endanger not just competition but also free speech as well since the platforms decide what is allowed. One could argue Amazon is actually a similar instance.
I'd contrast that with mergers, which think that is the absolute worst place for anti-trust because it gives the administration so much essentially discretionary power they can use to extract favors. Trump is brazen but I'm sure companies have always tried to avoid offending the people deciding their mergers.
Moreover, the standard shouldn't look at how market power was gained. It shouldn't matter if you developed that power by growth or merger. And that way we can leave it up to courts.
I'm not a big believer in antitrust generally but I think there is a decent argument that amazon should be forced to divest its own products. The market Amazon monopolizes is to home supply chain delivery and it is a natural Monopoly. Walmart tries but it just can't get you so much variety so quickly.
As with Microsoft and Excel the concern is illegal tieing -- you want to get the benefit of the natural supply chain monopoly Amazon has you have to purchase their kit. Well not quite have to but the point is that they have positive incentive not to give truly useful comparisons that might make their options look worse.
Currently ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ but I do worry it could become a bigger issue.
Hi Matt,
You wrote "I’d urge everyone to remember that we actually had this debate in the 2024 cycle. Simon Rosenberg got a lot of traction with his Hopium Chronicles Substack, which leaned heavily on special elections and the argument that we should trust actual voting behavior over surveys."
Matt, unfortunately your comments on special elections in the period between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections are not reality-based. Maybe you were led astray by fantasies invented by someone else, but that's no excuse for failing to fact check. I suggest that you redo this part of your analysis after fact checking. I can help with that - specifically with special elections for state legislative seats.
According to the ballotpedia.org web site:
state legislative special elections in 2021 - 3 seats flipped R to D, 3 flipped D to R, NO NET CHANGE
then in 2022 - 1 seat flipped R to D, 1 flipped D to R, NO NET CHANGE
then in 2023 - 2 seats flipped R to D, 2 flipped D to R, NO NET CHANGE
then in 2024 (before the November election *) - 2 seats flipped R to D, 1 flipped D to R, D GAIN +1
Thus in the entire period between the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, Democrats had a net gain of exactly ONE seat in state legislative special elections. (Democrats gained two more seats in special elections held concurrently with the November 2024 general election, but you and Mr. Rosenberg didn't know that would happen before the election was held.)
Contrast that with more recent results
in 2025 - 8 seats flipped R to D, 0 D to R (additional notes on 2025: Excluding elections affected by redistricting, 5 seats flipped R to D. Unusually, 4 of those 5 flips were state senate seats, which are more important that state house seats.)
in 2026 so far - 4 seats flipped R to D, 0 D to R
While special elections are far from the only indicator of voter preferences between general elections, the results certainly reinforce claims that the current political environment is unfavorable for Republicans.
Thank you for your comments on ties. A suit without a tie just looks like you forgot your tie and is incomplete. If you don't want to wear a tie don't wear a suit. Also, always wear socks with a suit and don't wear sneakers.
The necktie is the most useless garment. All it accomplishes is cutting off circulation to the brain, and we all see plenty of examples of that.
Has Matt been menswear-pilled? Is it time to have Derek Guy on the Politix podcast?
I could really use an in-depth California governor's race article before I have to vote. I appreciate knowing that Matt likes Mahan, since I definitely wasn't looking at him before, though I do think it's a bit dubious to run for governor when you haven't even served a full term as mayor. I really don't feel like the state has been well-served with Newsom partly because he's always been looking at the next job.
>I hope that Mamdani helps spark a “wear a damn tie” revival among younger politicians because, fundamentally, if you’re wearing a suit, you should wear a tie.
On one hand, I agree. On the other, if I button my collar two days in a row my skin will stage a coup. And no, it doesn't matter what size neck my shirt has or how well it fits. Maybe there is a fabric out there that this wouldn't happen with, but I've never found it.
What is the attraction of Matt Mahan? I don’t get it.
My only strong feelings so far are that it’s a shame Betty Yee never stood a chance, and that I would vote for almost any other Democrat to not have to listen to Katie Porter for four years
My inclination has been towards Yee and Becerra and Mahan but I will have to see what polls look like in the next few weeks.
Yglesias' pro-tie tie take is genuinely surprising to me. I enjoy wearing ties for the self-expressive pop of color, but I often deliberately forgo them as deference to prevailing aesthetics - I want to look like a sharp academic giving a TED talk rather than a high-schooler on his way to his first big job interview. But Yglesias' seems to think people's personal dislike of ties prevents them from looking stylish and professional.
Fellas, tie or no tie?
For academia, it depends a lot on your subject. Mathematicians don’t look serious if they’re wearing anything fancier than t shirt and jeans. French literature professors need to be stylish, but not a suit. Business or medicine goes for a suit. Poorly fitting if you’re an engineer.
I’m anti anything but scrubs. You can’t really trust anyone in a suit and tie unless it’s a wedding
I'm pro-tie.
I mean I tend to wear a cocktail suit to dinner on Saturday night without a tie and with a bolder shirt.
But a business suit without a tie looks asinine.
I'm disappointed with Matt's answer to City of Trees' question (If you were born in America at any time in the past, what views would you hold that are different/contradictory to the ones you do hold?)
Matt Y very conveniently answers that he would have been on the right side of the issues. Of course he would have been against slavery if he had lived in 1850s America!
It's easy to look back and say, Oh, of course I would have been different from those people back then, they were horrible!
So here's a follow-up question for Matt: Are you an ethical vegetarian, or do you at least strive to limit your meat consumption for ethical reasons?
Imagine this conversation taking place in 2100s America (assuming there's been no catastrophic collapse of society due to either nuclear war or rogue AI):
"Mom, is it true that Americans in the past, like back in the 2020s, used to kill animals for food?"
"Yes, Son, it's true."
"But they didn't just kill them, I've been reading this book about it, they used to keep animals in really horrible conditions, like, in tiny crates or cages, and they would cut off chickens' beaks and pigs' tails without any painkillers and stuff!"
"Yes, Son, I'm sorry to say, it's all true."
"This is terrible! How could they have been so evil? I've read other books from the time, and they, or at least some of them, were really big on empathy, didn't they realize that animals are living beings that also want to be happy and not to suffer?"
"Son, I know it's hard to understand. But think about it this way. I can go to the grocery store and buy Impossible 3.0 steak that's made with plants and tastes identical to how real meat would have tasted and is supplemented to have the same nutritional profile as real meat. The people in 2020 didn't have that option. If they wanted something that tasted like and had the same nutritional content as meat, they had no choice but to kill an animal for food."
"But Mom, they didn't have to kill animals to survive, did they? I know there were ethical vegetarians back then, like that one guy, I saw his old blog posts from the 2020s... what's his name... oh yeah, Matt Yglesias. He told his readers that it is totally possible to have a healthy vegetarian diet. Even when you don't have Impossible 3.0 meat."
"Wow, you've been really nerding out about this! That's my boy! Yes, you're right. Matt Yglesias... now there's a classic old thinker for you... he did say those things. But even his regular readers, those who liked him and mostly agreed with him, got really angry when he tried to convince them not to eat meat. People really liked meat back then, you see."
"So you're saying people valued eating something tasty over refusing to raise and kill millions of animals in horrible conditions? Man, the people of the 2020s really sucked."
I mean, my great grandfather was an abolitionist, so it's reasonable that I might have been.
I just wouldn't have picked that question, because it's inherently impossible to answer. It's like asking what Babe Ruth's batting average today would be if you took him and gave him modern MLB training and conditioning and stuck him in today's MLB. The problem is ill-posed, in the formal sense of that term. It's not possible to vary the background social conditions in some defined way and have that mechanically and predictably produce a different set of Yglesias Thoughts.
He should have answered my question about the Supreme Court instead...
"Scott Wiener is a housing policy hero."
Worth repeating at every opportunity.
Can’t resist weighing in on the California politics takes. For anyone who is eligible to vote in the 11th Congressional District election I would just point out that Scott Wiener has been an unusually effective state legislator. He just doesn’t give up and keeps working on his issues with a skill and determination that set him apart. He is exactly who you would want representing you in Congress if you share his general position (which is progressive even in California and only considered “moderate” in SF). I also think Mahan is the best candidate and the whole purpose of the jungle primary was to give the minority party voters more influence on who gets elected but it seems very difficult to actually persuade a critical number of Republican voters to vote for Mahan because he is their best option for some moderation. And it’s tricky to pull it off without alienating all the left of center voters but I still have a smidgen of hope. It’s also crazy to me that the Trump endorsed candidate has a posh British accent and used to work for David Cameron. Strange way to celebrate 250 years of declaring our independence from Britain.
Do Americans know that Steve Hilton was an adviser to David Cameron who was so weird that they added a character to a British satirical TV show specifically intended to make fun of him?
This character was Stewart Pearson, played by Vincent Franklin, and the show was The Thick Of It, in (he was added in 2007, and played a major role in the 2012 fourth series that was set after the arrival of the Conservatives in government)
Huh, I just thought he was the former Padres guy who lost an election last year.
I don’t really track republicans that closely.
TIL! I do wonder if he'll start falling in the polls once more people hear his voice and realize he has a British accent. Especially disconcerting to his Republican electorate.
He is a Californian, he just worked in British politics for a few years about ten years ago.
I hate when the 2016 election comes up. People (even people here) can't discuss it because they let their irrational antipathy toward Hillary Clinton color their judgment.
Clinton did not run a bad campaign. People who run bad campaigns **don't** win the popular vote. What she did run was a spectacularly unlucky campaign, in that she did just poorly enough in exactly the right states to deny her a majority in the Electoral College. And while it was her campaign and the buck stops with her, no presidential candidate wakes up in the morning and says "I think we'll campaign in Wisconsin today." They have a team of strategists who make those decisions well in advance.
The 2016 election could easily have gone the other way. But them's the breaks.
I am totally torn on the CA governors race. Mahan is my top candidate, but he doesn't seem to have a realistic shot. It does seem like Steyer has more defined plans to boost housing supply than Becerra. So in expected value terms, Im thinking of voting for Steyer.
I want Mahan to win but will wait to vote until June 2 to see if he is in with a shot. If not, I think I'll go with Becerra: he actually has executive and governing experience. While Steyer may have better policy positions, I don't think he's demonstrated the relevant skill set as much. I also am wary that he had the gall to run for president in 2020 with such a low profile - that's a sign of too much hubris (see also: Swalwell, Eric).
What is the attraction of Matt Mahan?
Mahan seems the most YIMBY-aligned of all the candidates.
I suppose that's the vibe I get, but when I look at his actual positions they don't seem great.
https://www.mahanforcalifornia.com/housing
None of it is wrong, but the main reason housing is expensive is land use and permitting, and he doesn't say anything about land use and only something mealy mouthed about building codes.