AstroTurf and Economics
I like Matt Stoller, and Arnold Kling, and even (for a different value of “like,” because he’s clearly a cult leader) Scott Alexander.
Right now there’s a conversation going about regulation of credit card processors over on Stoller's blog and a conversation about monopolies on Kling's, and a conversation about CEO compensation on Alexander's. And some of the comments are incomprehensible if you're looking at them from the point of view of a normal human.
From the point of a Bezos troll farm, though, I guess I can see how the idea that Stoller's explanation of how Amazon's monopoly (which is based on using free shipping as a cudgel to threaten other retailers, including those who sell on its platform) works, which is lucid, clear, and entertaining is “unconvincing.”
TL;DR: The AstroTurf farms have found Substack. Do not assume you're talking to a person with no axe to grind in any comments section discussing matters of real import.
I have regularly seen obvious cointel stuff on some of the more popular COVID/political dissent stacks for ages. It's 100% not new at all.
I noticed bizarre, incomprehensible comments from one account on here months ago--Ironically, whenever and only when I explicitly discussed AI in my posts. There are definitely experiments going on.