Ezra Klein in attention-seeking mode. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
All liberal pundits have an inherent conflict of interest, a constant temptation that tends to lead them astray. Those of us who read the output of the punditry must always be alert to that conflict. It’s that competing for attention may sometimes override their integrity and wisdom. They have to be at least a little provocative.
We’re all familiar with the extreme versions of this on the right. Think Rudy Giuliani, or Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Lauren Boebert. They have no integrity at all. Their entire schtick is about theatrics for the sake of getting attention. Ezra Klein, certainly, has too much integrity to go that far — though I think it’s true that part of what led formerly serious pundits such as Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald off the right-wing edge of the earth is that they went where the attention is.
Klein’s bid for more attention was his book Abundance, published earlier this year. He apparently calculated, quite correctly, that there was a lot of attention to be had, as a liberal, for arguing that regulation was behind shortages of things such as housing.
Klein got his butt kicked in an interview this morning in the New York Times. It’s Ross Douthat interviewing Lina Kahn, who was head of the Federal Trade Commission under President Biden.
Douthat says: “There’s been a really stark division between people who want to organize liberal thinking around antimonopoly, anti-corporate power thinking, and people, like my colleague Ezra Klein, who have been arguing basically that the Democratic Party doesn’t have a strategy for dealing with the intense thicket of regulatory obstacles to building things and homes and factories in America.”
Khan (who I think is much smarter than Douthat, by the way), says: “Look, we need to talk in a market-by-market way, but if you are offering a diagnosis that is also suspiciously quiet about the role of corporate power, I think that should raise some questions as well.”
Some examples
Kahn is being subtle, and she is being fair. She is saying that Klein is ignoring the many ways that corporate power, in addition to regulation, leads to a shortage of affordable housing. I asked ChatGPT 4o to list some of the ways corporate interests inflate the cost of housing and the cost of renting:
• Large corporate entities — private equity firms, real estate investment trusts (REITs), hedge funds — have increasingly purchased single-family homes and rental properties, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis.
• Large developers and investment firms often buy and hold land (especially in growing urban fringes) without building, waiting for values to rise.
• Corporate developers increasingly construct entire neighborhoods of single-family homes intended solely for rent, not sale.
• A handful of large firms dominate sectors like building materials, cement, and lumber distribution, contributing to inflated construction costs.
• Corporate landlords and real estate lobbies (e.g. National Multifamily Housing Council) invest heavily in lobbying to block rent control, eviction moratoria, and tenant union protections.
• Some large landlords use rental pricing software (e.g. RealPage’s YieldStar) to algorithmically set rent levels and discourage undercutting.
Klein is on probation now
Klein, in my view, has traded a chunk of his credibility in trying to buy more attention. To me, this calls into question his integrity as well as his credibility. This can be a slippery slope, the slope that corrupted Greenwald and Taibbi so badly that only the right-wing mediasphere can stomach them.
This is happening at a time when corporate-owned media are increasingly pressuring their liberal pundits to compromise themselves to increase their appeal to right-wing readers. This is why Paul Krugman left the New York Times. It’s why Lillian Rubin left the Washington Post.
Let’s hope that Klein comes to his senses and doesn’t slip down that slope.
