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Sarang Shah

@sarangshah.com

1.5K followers 290 following 58 posts

lawyer + politics phd candidate @ UC Berkeley, soon Columbia Law School E-mail/face-to-face is best: [email protected] Here's what I am up to: sarangshah.com past: physicist, tech writer, & journalist taoist living in San Francisco

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · Jul 22

Pleased to share our new paper now out in Perspectives on Politics! Happy to discuss and looking forward to hearing thoughts and suggestions for further research.

Perspectives on Politics @poppublicsphere.bsky.social · Jul 22

NOW OUT ON FIRSTVIEW!!

Who Wants #Stakeholder #Capitalism? Public & Elite Perceptions of the Role of #Business #Leaders in #Politics

By @eitanhersh.bsky.social & @sarangshah.com

doi.org/10.1017/S153...

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Reposted by Sarang Shah

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 10h

Look, this "dramatic break" stuff is simply not true. Domestic politics & geopolitics have shaped economic policies for ~forever, even as, yes, the causal arrow goes both ways. People have written vast piles of books & articles about this. An entire field, called "international political economy" 🤷‍♂️

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Matt Strabone @mattstrabone.bsky.social · 1d

There is a growing realization among our generation—journalists and non-journalists alike—that we're going to have to rebuild this country's media institutions from scratch.

James Hell Brooks @kleinman.bsky.social · 1d

The need for fearless. independent journalism has never been greater. Which is why I'm excited to announce that I have accepted a job to become the Head of Research at @heartlandsignal.bsky.social. We have big things in store so check us out.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 12h

A long dysfunctional Congress (thanks largely to the filibuster) seems to have shifted many people's conception of the government as elected absolutist monarchy

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 12h

Seems like a problem a continent-spanning regulatory authority could solve

Philip Bump @pbump.com · 12h

You can’t talk seriously about gun violence in Chicago without talking about where the guns come from. www.pbump.net/o/the-red-st...

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Philip Bump @pbump.com · 12h

You can’t talk seriously about gun violence in Chicago without talking about where the guns come from. www.pbump.net/o/the-red-st...

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 12h

A silver lining perhaps

Isaiah Bishop @isaiahbishop.bsky.social · 20h

shot in the dark, i think its plausible genai kills a lot of what social media has become in the last 5 years and we all go back to collective/common entertainment

Materialist Gnostic @walmsley.bsky.social · 20h

I think this is true but also that we've seen elements of this already

Reposted by Sarang Shah

J. Nathan Matias @natematias.bsky.social · 16h

It’s hard not to see tools like this as a strong threat to the common human decency that I have spent the last 15 years working for. So I would genuinely like to know what public goods are worth all this.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

Marx would pawn his aristocratic wife's heirlooms, and was even once suspected of having stolen them by the pawnbroker
marxistleftreview.org/articles/mar...

Marx at 200: reflections on his life and work

Michael Lazarus sketches a portrait of Marx’s life 200 years after his birth.

marxistleftreview.org

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

Sahn (2025) encapsulated in a single picture
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition' à la Federalist 51, but what if one's ambition is factional power in the mad king's court?

The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 15h

Feel like the story of the cumulative weaknesses of our republic is partisan capture of multiple power centers that were designed to be in perpetual low grade conflict defending their spheres of power against each other.

Governor JB Pritzker @govpritzker.illinois.gov · 21h

If the National Governors Association chooses to remain silent, Illinois will have no choice but to withdraw from the organization.

We should be standing as one against the idea that Donald Trump can call up the National Guard against our will.

Reposted by Sarang Shah

Jamila Michener @povertyscholar.bsky.social · 16d

My book w/@profsorelle.bsky.social will be out in January! These ideas have brewed since I interned at Queens Legal Services 20 years ago. The book is for anyone who cares about people, justice, power & democracy. Much more to share more in the coming months!

press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Uncivil Democracy

How the civil legal system undermines the political lives of marginalized communities

press.princeton.edu

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

Read theory (Jessop and Boyer)

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

Use one giant inflating asset bubble (mortgages and their derivatives) to inflate another asset bubble and its derivatives. Repeat until collapse, then use accumulated political capital to underwrite one's class, reserve right to start the cycle over again.

Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 15h

The endless circular inside deals where the AI and chips industries keep paying each other the same money may look bad, but let's listen to the informed perspective Washington D.C. brings to the question www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Screenshot of text:

In Washington, some have adopted a laissez-faire attitude to all the activity in a sector viewed as vital to competing with geopolitical rival China. “It’s up to them,” White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks told Bloomberg on Monday. “We want American companies to be successful.” The Trump administration, for its part, is also connected to the sprawling web of AI investments through its stake in Intel Corp., not to mention its plans to take a cut of Nvidia and AMD’s chip sales to China.

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

I wonder if this is an imminent problem with constitutional government, that constitutions become "naturalized" as the civic religion, no matter how democratic in spirit it once was, forgets that the framing of a constitution is an ongoing act of popular sovereignty

Noah @ncallaway.bsky.social · 15h

Like, I think Jefferson was a little extreme with the idea that a Constitution cannot really be binding beyond 19 years, but... it's insane to me that we describe the Constitution as the "consent of the people" when it's so horribly ossified.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

Grewal and Purdy get at a bit of this here www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/GrewalPu...
But also worth looking at work on the development of the idea of popular sovereignty (e.g. Dan Lee on Bodin), recent work by Ciepley, Edelstein, and other neo-pluralists on corporations and charters, etc. for this idea

www.yalelawjournal.org

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

Spending one's days seeking the next "brick" to put in the wall suggests an opportunity cost of examining the wall itself, what it is made of and whether it is worth building.

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

If the former is exclusively what we teach as social science, then, yeah, maybe some social scientists will achieve the latter, through sustained exposure to the subject and a healthy discursive community, but it is different than prioritizing the latter.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 13h

The social sciences can either be conceived of as a project to generate cumulative knowledge with each contribution "standing on the shoulder of giants", or as a means to wisdom through reflection and critical analysis.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 14h

I think "Straussianism" in a sense (or really I'd say the path of Hobbes per Richard Tuck) can only work in the postmodern age if one also reveals one's aim to do the trick, the superstructure that compels us to lie as we adopt the language of deception.

Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 14h

There are some in the academy who self-censor without realizing it, or truly believe the superficial bowdlerized language is truly all there is. There are others who consciously censor out of self-interest. And others resigned to a marginal position, to say things unpolluted by the reality of power.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 14h

A useful revelation. For example, one may say they aim to manipulate the media, like Chris Rufo, and be all the more successful in doing so. One may say they use a certain vocabulary to escape censorship, while meaning something else. The truth is the means by which we are compelled to deceive.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 14h

There's a great story the artist William Kentridge tells about witnessing a magician in Paris. The magician blows bubbles that seem to shatter like glass. The magician then lifts his coat to show a little bell he rings for every popped bubble. Revealing the bell somehow makes it feel even more real.

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George Pearkes @peark.es · 20h

Well that's not how appropriations work at all

*WHITE HOUSE TO TRANSFER TARIFF REVENUE TO FUND WIC: LEAVITT

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 14h

Feels like the Confederacy waited to capture the Union and now (they think) they've won

Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 15h

Never before in American history has one state's military force been deployed in another state over its objection.

I say never because the Civil War involved states whose governments legally ceased to exist, their offices vacated by constructive resignation, with no legitimate governors to object.

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Sarang Shah @sarangshah.com · 20h

Serious question: What happened to the San Francisco Standard?