Hackwatch reader Matthew Yglesias is having trouble understanding, so we’re going to slow it down for him.
Last week, noted Hackwatch megafan Matthew Yglesias left a comment on our substack, seemingly confused by what we had written. Despite his rather unkind personal attacks, we still thought it would be worth some time to slow things down and help unpack the piece he was so perplexed by. After all, I was taught that it’s really important to have someone help you understand a concept when you’re confused. Making fun of those having trouble with something just results in unproductive angry outbursts (like the one screenshotted above).
For those who did not read last week’s Hackwatch, part of it addressed polling by a Democratic-alligned firm named Blueprint. This polling showed that anti-price gouging and other corporate crackdown-style messages were extremely effective at reaching voters in swing states. It also showed that cryptocurrency is simply not a crucial issue in the 2024 election.
We thought the first of these was particularly interesting because Blueprint is funded by billionaire Reid Hoffman. Hoffman made news in July when he called for VP Harris to fire FTC Commissioner Lina Khan if she wins the election and he has been a noted crypto enthusiast for at least a decade. Yet, the polling firm he helps fund has concluded that the policies being spearheaded by Khan’s FTC are overwhelmingly popular with the electorate and has proved there’s no need for the Harris campaign to cater to crypto bros.
But our inclusion of Blueprint’s funder was not to say that we found the source of the polling to be illegitimate. We merely wanted to point out that this polling was not conducted by a firm closely aligned with the progressive push for antitrust. If anything, Blueprint has an incentive to be biased against the Khan FTC policies their funder so dislikes. This makes their polling all the more credible, as it’s an admission against interest.
This is a fancy legal term for a simple concept; someone admitting something against their own interest is more credible than the same person stating something that aligns with their ideal outcome. We weren’t impugning the validity of Blueprint’s research, in fact we were reinforcing it on these specific points.
We are, to be honest, perplexed as to how Yglesias wants us to “revise our views.” Does he… not want us to trust Blueprint despite his own previous reliance upon their work?One possible answer is that he wants us to apologize for correctly describing Reid Hoffman’s desire to see Khan fired despite a weak walk-back attempt. But more likely, Yglesias wants to use this one instance of Hoffman acting as a credible source (due to his admission against interest) to force us to treat Hoffman as a presumed good-faith operator going forward. This we will not do.
It is one thing for a billionaire to concede the popularity of issues he personally dislikes in order to bolster his preferred candidate’s election outcomes. That’s just good strategy. But after the election, the incentive for Hoffman to act counter to his own interests disappears. Without the legitimacy conferred by an admission against interest, Hoffman’s ideas just become more hearsay from a self-interested plutocrat.
Of course, maybe Blueprint will continue this independent streak going forward. Not mathematically impossible! But nor are we going to assume that all moments in the future will be similar to this very specific one in the present.
Yglesias concluded his comment by declaring that he had watched Khan’s 60 Minutes interview and came away impressed (despite previously misrepresenting her record in the Biden administration). Perhaps he’s had an epiphany in the past month. What seems more likely to me is that he finally started engaging with the material after months of criticism and came away with a different opinion. This wouldn’t be the first time.