The Irresponsible Engine → Fractional Leadership →Unintelligible Vanity

Hey Neighbor. The White Lotus is the 2002 Oakland Athletics of TV shows – an attempt to buy cheap wins. As Mike White (accidentally?) disclosed to the Hollywood Reporter this week, the show pays regulars scale, a moneyball approach that de-risks the franchise while allowing HBO to compete in the prestige playoffs.

None of that is bad per se. But the trophy case in the Oakland Coliseum is as empty as… the Oakland Coliseum.

The 2025 Scared Money Survey is our attempt to find out WTF people like you are doing with their money… before it’s too late. Results from the 3-minute survey will be shared (*exclusively*) with survey participants and Upper Middle Research members.

→ In 1994, academic bomb throwers Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron dropped “The California Ideology,” a map of the territory west of the Sierra, where San Francisco’s hedonistic liberalism had collided with Silicon Valley’s neoliberal worship of free markets. The pamphlet described freedom obsessed white-collar W2 workers who only ever buck their bosses by finding new bosses. “Living within a contract culture, the digital artisans lead a schizophrenic existence. On the one hand, they cannot challenge the primacy of the marketplace over their lives. On the other hand, they resent attempts by those in authority to encroach on their individual autonomy. By mixing New Left and New Right, the Californian Ideology provides a mystical resolution of the contradictory attitudes.” We’re all Californian now. (READ MORE)

→ Over at Eminent Americans, Dan Oppenheimer argues that college-educated Democrats are spending so much time criticizing the left for the simple reason that “it’s what we know.” This seems correct. Part of what keeps the left, center-left, and center-right focused on the failings of Chuck Schumer is a genuine confusion about the goals and strategies of the far right. Insulting Canada isn’t exactly quantum physics, but it’s similarly disorienting for people used to knowing how things work. (READ MORE)

Economists across the country did the Ben Affleck’s sad smoking meme yesterday as President Trump announced plans to hike tariffs to the highest level since 1910. Economists believe the so-called “reciprocal” tariffs – nonsensically calculated by dividing deficits by exports – will drive up prices, tank consumer sentiment, and kneecap a bull market with all the subtlety of Tonya Harding’s henchman. The “Liberation Day” ceremony was to nerds in ties what the maybe-we-should-inject-bleach Covid press conference was to medical professionals, a stunning public unknowing of known knowns – a dismissal of both expertise and common sense.

Skepticism of experts is a long tradition on the right – and arguably a noble one. In the late 1980s and early 1990s ivory tower reactionaries like social critic Christopher Lasch ventured out of wood-paneled offices to argue that the earsplittingly authoritative voices of the academic elite were drowning out the sort of common sense “acquired in the everyday affairs of life.” Lasch, Updike’s Harvard roommate, was an odd medium for that message, but it resonated nonetheless. The idea that policy should emerge from experience and research, not just research had small-d democratic appeal. Republicans went all in ^[1]. The sharp-toothed coastal elite sat down with a knife and fork, drizzling a bit of hot sauce on its own tail.

“Communities, families, and workplaces transmit practical wisdom—the only kind of knowledge that can be truly democratic,” wrote Lasch in 1991’s The True and Only Heaven, “whereas expertise too often degenerates into an elaborate scheme of self-justification."

Whether or not Lasch’s cynicism about the self-dealing expert class – the “Deep State,” really – was warranted is a matter of perspective. The credentialists who centralizing power under Clinton spent the next few decades (minus a few bad years around 2008) overseeing unprecedented economic growth. But they did nothing to combat the sort of cultural degradation that worried him. As America transformed into an information economy, the sort of “practical wisdom” transmitted by communities and families was devalued or destroyed. There are, after all, no UX mills in the Ohio River Valley or derivatives mines in West Virginia.

When Trump ignores experts, he tends to deploy the same sort of rhetoric as Lasch and Lasch sympathizers from the an earlier era (think: Pat Buchanan, Rick Santorum, and, TBH, Bernie Sanders^[2]) but where their skepticism of experts represented a respectful deference to folk knowledge and a belief that people are pretty reasonable if you just leave them alone, Trump’s does not. Trump’s rhetoric around tariffs has not been about the very real trade offs of free trade, but about unfairness – another word for a poorly struck deal.

As the self-anointed deal guy, Trump is not disposed to offer deference. He just demands it. That’s what Peter Navarro is for.

A Harvard guy in the Kaczynski tradition, Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, is what you get when you banish the experts that banished the folks with common sense. Paul Krugman described his understanding of economics as “akin to a pyromaniac's grasp of fire safety,” but Trump keeps bringing him back. And it’s clear why. In 2018, he went on 60 Minutes and described his job as trying to “provide the underlying analytics that confirm [Trump’s] intuition.” 

Put differently, his job is to not know what is known or what is unknown or to have any common sense. If the modern state is, as Lasch put it, “an engine of irresponsibility,” Navarro is the mechanic that tries to gas it up with piss and vinegar.

The most frustrating thing about having to watching him work and watching the economic wheels come fall off and roll down the street isn’t that it’s all so dumb and unnecessary. It’s not even that one of those wheels is going to crash through someone’s family room window. The most frustrating thing is being asked to pretend we didn’t know what was going to happen.

→ Asked by Interview to curate the perfect dinner playlist, DJ Koze swerved and did the least Berlin hipster thing possible – recommending the work of Ethiopian pianist Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru. Great call. (LISTEN)

→ The kaftan is happening and there’s nothing we can (or should) do to stop it^[3].

→ Spring is the mischief in me.

→ Elon makes more sense if you’ve taken a lot of ketamine. (READ MORE)

→ One of the unlikely truths about OpenAI is that the Google killer’s employees have good taste. The #Ghibli aesthetic moment – all those new profile pictures – came on the heels of Sam Altman releasing an AI authored short story that lightly plagiarized Nabokov and Murakami. Clearly, someone in the Pioneer Building is trying to enlighten the blackest box on the internet. Whether or not that’s a good thing remains to be seen. (READ MORE)

→ Tariffs are about to make foreign-made clothes a lot more expensive. Fortunately, America does one thing really well: BASICS. Here are precisely 20 companies you’re gonna want to know: 

Antique prices have bottomed out over the last few years even as inflation (and other external shocks) have driven up the cost of both coffee and coffee tables. As online auctions and resellers make it easier than ever to pick through old peoples’ stuff and 1stDibs makes a strong case for the investment potential of old shit one original Noguchi at a time, the bookish eunuchs who congregate in Pasadena and Brimfield are scratching their heads, wondering what’s going on.

Here are three theories.

1. The Past is Illegible.

“There is no more remarkable psychological element in history than the way in which a period can suddenly become unintelligible,” G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1904. “The thing always happens sharply: a whisper runs through the salons … and a whole generation of great men and great achievement suddenly looks mildewed and unmeaning.” 

If that was true in 1904, it’s doubly true in 2025 when the content options are a bit more compelling than nickelodeons and the number of history majors is in bad decline. Like a cracked commode, the idea of “oldy but a goody,” no longer seems to hold water.

2. Antique is an Adjective

Philosophers Ben Curtis and Darwin Baines suggested back in 2016 (as the market started to collapse) that when consumers hear the word “antique” they don’t think old. They think baroque or rustic. They imagine hefty brown furniture and they’re not into it (which is presumably why the price of old English furniture is down 40% from a decade ago). Sure, the Wassily chairs that remain so popular with upwardly mobile Millennials are antiques, but they are not consumed as such. They are “iconic.” That’s different – and the “icon” market is simply smaller than the antique market.

3. Supply is Understated

Boomers represent a massive portion of the antiques market and as they approach death – or worse, downsizing – their children have started to eye the club chairs and chaises in their homes. Sure, that leather Danish modern loveseat isn’t coming back to Brooklyn any time soon, but it will – which creates a strong incentive to make do with some West Elm sectionals in the meantime.

→ Oooof.^[4]

→ This week Fox News host Harris Faulkner suggested that tariffs will cause “401(K) People” some short term discomfort. This is a remarkably dismissive comment and an amazing formulation. Who wants to start a band called 401(K) People? We do nothing but 10,000 Maniacs covers. 

→ At Culture Study, AHP makes a strong argument that gig economy helpmeets found on services like TaskRabbit and Angi are rarely worth the money and never will be: “If you wanted to reverse engineer a job to ensure that the people doing it would do it badly, you’d build something like Angi. It doesn’t provide training. It doesn’t provide tools. It doesn’t provide benefits, or job security, or anything close to a living wage. If you get better at assembling, or if you’re so good you amass a client base, you can bet you’re not doing those jobs through Angi anymore.” (READ MORE)

→ The number of job listings for fractional executives has skyrocketed over the last few years. On the one hand, that suggests a way for mid- or late-career execs to engage in fun, startuppy work. On the other hand, it suggests that you will never be comfortable. The only thing worse than dying at your desk is dying at someone else’s. (READ MORE)

[2] It’s fair to say that the GOP has been sharper on the downsides of free trade, but the socialist and democratic socialist has been in the mix as well. The difference between the two is that the former insists the concern is economic, not humanitarian.

[3] Nightgowns are coming back too. I kind of think women just want to dress like ghosts. And I feeeeeeel that.

[4] It’s okay to talk about it. It feels better if you talk about it.