Peter Dorman

peterdorman.substack.comExplaining the AI Debt BubbleWhat is it about AI, and tech in general, that creates such an extreme appetite for debt, even in the face of operating losses?

A hypothesis about the AI debt bubble: peterdorman.substack.com/p/explaining...

An interesting anecdote about voting here in PDX. A friend was notified that the ballot he dropped in a collection box was rejected because his signature didn't match. Well, he's 84 and has a tremor -- not unusual. Since when did election authorities match signatures? Are they in a defensive crouch?

Just got around to reading the Bernard Avishai op-ed in the NY Times. He promotes a liberal, cultural Zionism as an antidote to the reactionary political and religious versions. But he gives the game away in this paragraph:

My parents were cultural Zionists. They never used the word Palestinians, only Arabs. There were lots of Arab countries, they said, why couldn't the people in the camps just move to one of them? Only after the 1967 did they realize that Arabs are not interchangeable. Not seeing difference is racism.

nytimes.comHow Venezuela’s Public Housing Towers Were Built to Fail (Gift Article)Venezuela’s government wanted housing built for its supporters — and fast. The design and construction flaws that followed proved deadly when earthquakes hit, a Times investigation found.

This is a heartbreaking story, but it confirms a longstanding critique of traditional socialism. There was a fatal principal-agent problem, since the government responsible for enforcing building codes was also the government doing the construction. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

For socialism to work, there has to be true autonomy for socially owned firms, even a certain amount of antagonism between them and state regulators. This was also the problem at the heart of the soft budget constraint, where state-owned firms were relieved of the need to be solvent.

theguardian.comAmerica gets new national park with designation of Chiricahua’s rock spiresArizona’s Land of Standing-Up Rocks, formed from ancient volcanic eruption, gets new status with bipartisan support

It's great to see that the Chiricahua National Monument will now become a national park. I've hiked through there a few times, always awestruck. One additional thing, though: it's pretty far from everywhere. Here's an idea... www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Bob Marshall, who created the official wilderness designation during the New Deal, was a socialist and wanted the government to not only preserve natural areas but also bring public transportation to their boundaries. Make it easy for ordinary people to visit. Still a good idea.

In the news: Donald Trump is turning the White House into the world's first gold-plated assisted living facility.

theguardian.com‘We tried to levitate the Pentagon’: the almost unbelievable life of Ed Sanders, trickster god of the US countercultureHe gave Jimi Hendrix his gear, freaked out Frank Sinatra, inspired Norman Mailer – and tried to topple the American war machine. As a documentary about his band the Fugs comes out, the 87-year-old giv...

I wouldn't say that the Fugs led the levitation of the Pentagon in 1967. OK, it was a big demo, and it's possible the ritual took place where I couldn't see it. But I think I levitated the damned building all by myself. www.theguardian.com/music/2026/o...

OTOH, I attended a Fugs concert in Tompkins Sq. Park, also in 1967. A mom sitting in front of me yanked her teenage daughter and left when the band played their Saran Wrap song.

jacobin.comThe Political Economy of Cognitive DissonanceCognitive dissonance helps explain why people often turn away from problems they feel powerless to change: denial takes hold. That denial can weaken the solidarity required to change the conditions th...

Denial: it's political and not just personal. Political economy meets psychology in this latest Jacobin piece. jacobin.com/2026/10/cogn...

theguardian.comUS voters want more action on global heating. Why are Democrats and Republicans staying silent?Polls show that Democrats and Republicans in battleground states want to hear more from candidates about the climate crisis

It's frustrating that questions like this are always asked rhetorically, with no real attempt to answer them. Why indeed does the climate crisis go unmentioned in election campaigns? What would need to change for it to be given the attention it needs? www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Evergreen College is my old haunt, and I check into its reddit from time to time. Today I saw this photo of a missing dog, since returned. We have a glamorous border collie too, but this one is pretty amazing:

JD Vance, our in-house political theorist (from the NY Times):

I stumbled onto this today. Does anyone know the author or the publisher? Is this book real?

nytimes.comOpinion | Wildfires Are Unfightable Now (Gift Article)This year’s fast moving, virtually irrepressible wildfire events are not the seasonal burns of decades past.

An important read. Projected 2050 forest cover for the northern hemisphere is way less than current. The agent of change will be fire, and as the earth heats, stopping it will be impossible. Meanwhile, mandatory reductions in carbon emissions are off the agenda. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/o...

For me, the takehome is that a large majority of Republicans appear to be OK with democracy-ending interventions in November. The point is that, if you prevent Democrats from taking office, all you have to do is keep your base aligned.

10 Sept

Trump's $5K offer for voting R comes to just over $1.1 trillion for the whole country (21 or over). He can get the money by taking over Greenland and then renting it out.

nytimes.comKenyans Made a Living Writing College Essays. Then A.I. Arrived. (Gift Article)Thousands of Kenyans made a living writing essays for overseas students. With A.I., the work has dried up, a warning for online gig work that has been a global lifeline.

6 Sept

These Kenyans made far less than the US students whose papers they wrote so they could get through college. Hold that thought for a while. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/t...

jacobin.comAn Agenda for De-Alienating WorkWork becomes less alienating when workers are given more autonomy, voice in workplace decisions, and jobs that develop skills. The Left needs a practical strategy for making jobs better now and transf...

5 Sept

Alienation, from epithet to toolkit. Unpacking the amorphous concept to devise strategies for making work better. jacobin.com/2026/09/work...

groundbrkr.comThe Teaser Period: Why the AI Boom Is Hitting a Reset WallTrillions in compute commitments come due in 2027–2028. The Reset Wall reveals how the AI boom breaks, and when.

5 Sept

Finally got to this. You should read it. Very convincing (to me), but one cavil: yes, this is a bubble. A bubble arises when my demand for an asset derives from your demand, etc. In a bubble, I look at these charts and think..... www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser...

5 Sept

there's a lot of money to be made in this market between now and 2027, because other analysts will look at them and think the same thing, and their inference will drive my profit. It's an expectation equilibrium. "Bubble" explains why the arithmetic doesn't matter....until it does.

pluralistic.netPluralistic: Amazon achieves enshittification inception (04 Sep 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

4 Sept

This is an amazing story, very well told. Amazon's scam auctions, squeezing extra money out of vendors, constitute a sub-basement moral low. pluralistic.net/2026/09/04/c...

statmodeling.substack.comAgain, it’s not about the Jewish voteThe following headline appeared on today’s front page:

This is an important observation, but it points to something broader and more challenging: there really is a sort of Jewish money and media cabal pushing an agenda on America. It resembles the antisemitic stereotype, but it's not quite the same. statmodeling.substack.com/p/again-its-...

Third, while the elite agenda might have overlapped the views of ordinary Jews in the past, this is no longer true. There is a massive disconnect between what Jewish voters tell pollsters and the Israel-can-do-no-wrong conviction of the rich and influential.

Finally, this is strictly about Israel. AIPAC et al. do not condition support on other issues relevant to Jews, like separation of church and state or the promulgation of crude antisemitism -- still a problem. No, it's Israel, Israel, Israel. Maybe we need a real Jewish lobby.

statmodeling.substack.comAgain, it’s not about the Jewish voteThe following headline appeared on today’s front page:

First and obviously, money and influence isn't a special characteristic of Jews, most of whom have relatively little wealth and no cultural clout. We really are talking about a thin elite at the top, not chosen, incidentally, by the broader Jewish community. They didn't get there by being Jewish.

Second, this is strictly an empirical phenomenon. There really is a thin layer at the top that has an agenda specifically about Israel which it promotes sometimes openly, sometimes secretively. (See the partially hidden role of AIPAC.) No conspiracy theory necessary; just follow the news.

jacobin.comPut AI Under Social Ownership for Social PurposesPublic ownership may seem like the most obvious solution to the problems posed by AI. But purpose trusts could offer a more pluralistic form of social ownership — one that subordinates profit to a var...

25 Aug

New piece up in Jacobin on social ownership for AI. In case you're keeping track, this is the same approach I used in the article in the Int. Rev. of Applied Econ. on social ownership of social media. jacobin.com/2026/08/tech...

25 Aug

You can tell who's a data analyst at the farmers market. It's the one who asks if they can sample the strawberries, then tastes 80 or so, being careful not to take more than one from the same carton.

nytimes.comOpinion | An Ancient Sumerian Solution to Our $40 Trillion Deficit (Gift Article)In the ancient world, debt forgiveness was a regular tool to control the economy. Why have we forgotten it?

22 Aug

Jubilee is a great idea, but it has to be a surprise, otherwise no one will lend in the period leading up to it. The solution? A stochastic jubilee. If you put 50 envelopes in a drum with one marked J, draw once a year, interests rates go up 2% and that's it. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/o...

20 Aug

So we were having a discussion the other night about whether Moses was anything special, and I mentioned he had strong outdoor leadership skills....

statmodeling.substack.comUniversity professor is a job. Not an award.Don Rubin said once that a problem with university hiring committees is that they think that they’re giving an award rather than finding someone to do a job.

17 Aug

My feelings exactly. I especially like the part about the students, who have a right to have a professor qualified to be in front of the classroom. statmodeling.substack.com/p/university...

nytimes.comTrump Said to Have Secretly Used Military Jet to Leave Turkey Amid Threats From Iran (Gift Article)President Trump hid in an airport catering container and was taken to a military jet for a secret flight out of country after the NATO summit last month.

12 Aug

The part they don't tell you is that after Trump was whisked off the catering truck there wasn't anything left. A total wipeout on pretzels and peanuts. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/10/u...

open.substack.comDeep Dive episode: What if our leaders are actually more responsive to public opinion than we think?Watch now (59 mins) | I sit down with Peter Enns, a political scientist at Cornell University, whose new research offers an optimistic view of democracy and representation

10 Aug

As it happens, I discussed this in my book on climate change. I made similar points to Enns, but said something else: the biggest superpower of the rich is to limit the agenda. A proposal without some capitalist support is off the radar. No polls about it. open.substack.com/pub/gelliott...

jacobin.comThe Class Divide Haunting Climate PoliticsNew research confirms that policy messages on climate favored by college-educated liberals often fall flat with working-class Americans. The good news? Workers are favorable to pro-climate policies th...

5 Aug

Misguided advance, and basically the same bad advice we've been given for years. Why? (1) To hold warming to a likely 2º C (an outer limit target), the US has to cut CO2 emissions by at least 7% per year *indefinitely*. Building renewables etc. helps only indirectly. jacobin.com/2026/08/clim...

(2) The key idea is to *give the money back* transparently, an equal per capita rebate. All the money. Then you can say, instead of paying oil companies or petrostates when you buy gas etc., you're paying yourself. You come out ahead, esp. if you're below average in energy use.

peterdorman.substack.comThe Price of Oil: Why We Should Be Paying it to OurselvesBack in 2008, when the price of oil shot up to almost $150 a barrel — and that was in 2008 prices — I wrote an unrequested speech for candidate Barak Obama to give about the problem.

5 Aug

"Let's pay it to ourselves, not to the billionaires" sounds to me like pure class politics, as well as good economics. It wasn't tested in the polls cited in Jacobin, so we don't have numbers for it. It's been sitting there, unused, for decades. peterdorman.substack.com/p/the-price-...

Starting with what sells right now politically is a terrible way to confront climate change, whose determining factors do not adjust to politics. Fossil fuel use has to be cut steadily, significantly, year after year. How to convey that?

open.substack.comBegging the QuestionOnly a curmudgeon would complain about the changing meaning of words, demanding that the rules of language as they learned them should remain fixed forever.

3 Aug

Another Substack, this one lamenting the loss a useful phrase. Circular logic gets a pass. open.substack.com/pub/peterdor...

nytimes.comOpinion | The Flawed Environmental Case Against Data CentersOur animosity toward data centers is really more about our anxieties about A.I.

26 July

Wow, is this a weird op-ed. Like, learn how to walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, the environmental cost of data centers is a big issue. Yes, what we should and shouldn't do with AI is a big issue. One doesn't invalidate the other. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/o...

26 July

People worry that relying on AI to do your thinking for you will make you less intelligent. Reading stuff like this uncritically could have the same effect.

open.substack.comGaming a November Declaration of a State of EmergencyIt would be catastrophic for Trump and his circle if the Democrats took both houses of congress in the November midterms.

25 July

A Trump cancellation of the November midterms is more complicated than you might think, since it has to take into account the effects on the numbers of congressmen and senators who would likely continue in office. open.substack.com/pub/peterdor...

theguardian.com‘Forced labour’ rationale for Trump tariffs met with bewildermentMeasures effectively replace blanket 10% tariffs Trump imposed in February that were struck down by US supreme court

24 July

I have an extra reason to be disgusted by this ploy. I was the academic who first pushed to tie trade to labor standards back in the late 80s, before it got traction. The incentive effect depends on the difference between tariffs on violators and adherers. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

24 July

It's like ticketing drivers for speeding. If you fine speeders and non-speeders alike, the roads won't be safer. So this is more than just a lie; it's an attack on the flimsy measures we currently have to promote workers rights around the world.

nytimes.comOpinion | Nothing Can Prevent the New Wildfires. We Have to Adapt. (Gift Article)Suppression is not enough.

Wildfire smoke *is* important, but the economic calculation of its impact should be taken with a grain of salt. It's based on valuing each life lost at $11M, using the misguided methodology of the EPA. It would be cheaper if the same people were dying in Mexico, BTW. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/o...

Increased mortality is serious, of course, and climate change is causing this on many fronts. But turning it into a financial loss is both a category error and reliance on methods that don't withstand scrutiny.

This is something I've written on over the years: Markets and Mortality (Cambridge U Press), Risk without Reward: The Myth of Wage Compensation for Dangerous Work (EPI, 2020). Better is to value the strictly economic (fungible) costs separately and then add the others on their own terms.