🏛️ Socialism goes national in the US and ratchets taxes and spending higher
Friedberg's socialism thread re-aimed at the United States rather than Europe: stagnant wages against visibly higher grocery, rent and household-goods costs, plus his estimate that nearly half of Americans are employed directly or indirectly by government, produce a one-way ratchet in which every failed program is answered by a bigger program, so taxation and regulatory burden keep rising and the end state is seizing the means of production. Ben Shapiro supplies the trigger and the timing - a market or employment downturn converts a 'the rich got richer' grievance into full-scale redistributionism further left than Obama, a redux of 2007-08 - which compresses the multiple on US risk assets and on the financial and wealth-linked sectors most exposed to redistribution. Gavin Baker and Phil Deutch take the direct other side: the policies fail fast and visibly enough to end the experiment quickly, and the country has always swung back.
⚖ Why this verdict
fully deterministic — evaluate.py replays this from daily closes; nothing below is editable or hand-set
- Window: 2025-08-09 → 2026-08-09 — first mention + 12-month horizon, then the window locks.
- The call: ▼ SHORT SPY (primary play). SPY rose 22.9% over the window → direction-adjusted R = -22.9% (the call lost money).
- Benchmark: holding SPY over the same window returned +22.9%
→ α = -22.9 − (+22.9) = -45.9%
— what this call made or lost against just owning the index. This is the number the verdict uses.
Stock-selection read: +0.0% — did SPY move the predicted way relative to the market. The two only differ on a SHORT: this call was right about direction relative to the index but still cost money versus holding it.(SPY is itself the primary here — scored on R alone.)
- Rule fired:
· HIT — R ≥ +10% AND α ≥ +5· PARTIAL — R ≥ +5% OR α ≥ 0▶ MISS — everything else
- Credit: supporters of a MISS earn 0 each, opposers the inverse — this feeds the scoreboard weights. supported: Ben Shapiro, Friedberg | opposed: Gavin Baker | benchmark-primary: scored on R alone
Conviction timeline
bands: green ≥ 65 · watch ≥ 45 · ember ≥ 15
Plays vs SPY · % since first mention (2025-08-09)
Plays
| expression | symbol | kind | relevance | rationale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▼ SHORT | SPY | etf | PRIMARY | broad US equity multiple is what compresses if a national redistributionist turn gets priced |
| ▼ SHORT | IWM | etf | adjacent | domestically-exposed small caps carry the full weight of higher taxes, wage mandates and regulatory burden |
| ▼ SHORT | XLF | etf | adjacent | financials and asset managers are the most directly exposed to higher capital taxation and redistribution policy |
Mention log
“If things take a downturn, then the backlash is going to be a lot stronger than anything that any of us can say about the failures of Zoran Mamdani, because what it's going to be is, look, the rich got richer and we got poorer, and it's going to be a redox of 2007, 2008, but with a much, even further to the left than Obama ever was, and that I'm deeply afraid of.”
“So they won't work. And I think that'll be a quick, that'll be like a quick end to socialism.”
“I don't see that, but if you want to see that, you can, but it will swing back. This country is incredibly resilient, and I have complete faith in that resilience.”
Who built this conviction
each voice's total force on the score — supports and opposes from every mention, weighted exactly as the replay applied them · share = % of all mention-driven movement
⏳ decay drained -17.9 over the idea's life — that's time passing, attributed to no one
Score events
| episode | kind | Δ | after | note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E238 2025-08-09 | init | +35.2 | 35.2 | E238 born by Friedberg (explicit_prediction x3) [w=0.84] |
| E238 2025-08-09 | oppose | -6.0 | 29.2 | E238 Phil Deutch opposes x2 [w=0.50] |
| E238 2025-08-09 | oppose | -18.0 | 11.2 | E238 Gavin Baker opposes x2 [w=1.50] |
| E238 2025-08-09 | reinforce | +10.0 | 21.2 | E238 Ben Shapiro support x2 (new voice) [w=0.50] |
| E239 2025-08-15 | decay | -0.8 | 20.3 | E239 silent |
| E240 2025-08-22 | decay | -0.8 | 19.5 | E240 silent |
| E241 2025-08-29 | decay | -0.8 | 18.7 | E241 silent |
| E242 2025-09-07 | decay | -0.7 | 18.0 | E242 silent |
| E243 2025-09-19 | decay | -0.7 | 17.3 | E243 silent |
| E244 2025-09-27 | decay | -0.7 | 16.6 | E244 silent |
| E245 2025-10-03 | decay | -0.7 | 15.9 | E245 silent |
| E246 2025-10-10 | decay | -0.6 | 15.3 | E246 silent |
| E247 2025-10-17 | decay | -0.6 | 14.7 | E247 silent |
| E248 2025-10-24 | decay | -0.6 | 14.1 | E248 silent |
| E249 2025-10-31 | decay | -0.6 | 13.5 | E249 silent |
| E250 2025-11-07 | decay | -0.5 | 13.0 | E250 silent |
| E251 2025-11-14 | decay | -0.5 | 12.5 | E251 silent |
| E252 2025-11-22 | decay | -0.5 | 12.0 | E252 silent |
| E253 2025-12-06 | decay | -0.5 | 11.5 | E253 silent |
| E254 2025-12-13 | decay | -0.5 | 11.0 | E254 silent |
| E255 2025-12-19 | decay | -0.4 | 10.6 | E255 silent |
| E256 2025-12-31 | decay | -0.4 | 10.2 | E256 silent |
| E257 2026-01-10 | decay | -0.4 | 9.8 | E257 silent |
| E258 2026-01-17 | decay | -0.4 | 9.4 | E258 silent |
| E259 2026-01-30 | decay | -0.4 | 9.0 | E259 silent |
| E260 2026-02-07 | decay | -0.4 | 8.6 | E260 silent |
| E261 2026-02-13 | decay | -0.3 | 8.3 | E261 silent |
| E262 2026-02-28 | decay | -0.3 | 8.0 | E262 silent |
| E263 2026-03-06 | decay | -0.3 | 7.6 | E263 silent |
| E264 2026-03-13 | decay | -0.3 | 7.3 | E264 silent |
| E265 2026-03-19 | decay | -0.3 | 7.0 | E265 silent |
| E266 2026-03-27 | decay | -0.3 | 6.8 | E266 silent |
| E267 2026-04-03 | decay | -0.3 | 6.5 | E267 silent |
| E268 2026-04-10 | decay | -0.3 | 6.2 | E268 silent |
| E269 2026-04-17 | decay | -0.2 | 6.0 | E269 silent |
| E270 2026-04-24 | decay | -0.2 | 5.7 | E270 silent |
| E271 2026-05-01 | decay | -0.2 | 5.5 | E271 silent |
| E272 2026-05-08 | decay | -0.2 | 5.3 | E272 silent |
| E273 2026-05-15 | decay | -0.2 | 5.1 | E273 silent |
| E274 2026-05-22 | decay | -0.2 | 4.9 | E274 silent |
| E275 2026-05-29 | decay | -0.2 | 4.7 | E275 silent |
| E276 2026-06-13 | decay | -0.2 | 4.5 | E276 silent |
| E277 2026-06-19 | decay | -0.2 | 4.3 | E277 silent |
| E278 2026-06-26 | decay | -0.2 | 4.1 | E278 silent |
| E279 2026-07-03 | decay | -0.2 | 4.0 | E279 silent |
| E280 2026-07-11 | decay | -0.2 | 3.8 | E280 silent |
| E281 2026-07-18 | decay | -0.2 | 3.7 | E281 silent |
| E282 2026-07-24 | decay | -0.1 | 3.5 | E282 silent |
| E283 2026-07-31 | decay | -0.1 | 3.4 | E283 silent |
| E284 2026-08-08 | decay | -0.1 | 3.2 | E284 silent |