Governance Cybernetics

Governance Cybernetics

May 2026

It's harder to fire someone in China than in California (with caveats)
Until you look at the bottom half of each labor market, where dismissal is effectively at-will everywhere. For those with lawyers, it's a different…
 • Dave Deek
Data centers could lower power bills. Energy utilities won't.
The regulatory contract pays them to grow rate base, not lower bills.
 • Dave Deek
Nobody Trains a Zohran Mamdani or an Andy Byford. That's the problem, and it's a fixable one.
DSA trains organizers. The Federalist Society trains judges. Nobody trains to actually fix cities' and states' problems.
 • Dave Deek
Costco and Safeway are getting housing built where others fail. It isn't because a mayor wants it
The real luxury isn't square footage. It's not driving for onions. Notes on why the building goes up even when the mayor doesn't want it to
 • Dave Deek
Boris Johnson sees a "blessing" in falling British births. Britain's grandsons don't.
Young men and young women across the political spectrum are losing the same future. Their elders are celebrating and "ignoring the doom mongers"
 • Dave Deek
Walt Disney And The Romance of Building (A Ton of Apartment Buildings)
How Walt Disney, a Florida county, and thousands of unpaid Saturday mornings explain the future of American housing
 • Dave Deek

April 2026

Pragmata Now, Miyazaki Before: Marketing Kids Is Extremely Easy! So why birthrates are falling? Gamers? Girlbosses?
Maybe culture isn't the issue
 • Dave Deek
The CCP and China are even more competent (and fragmented) than you think.
Why the CCP's competence is more distributed than you think, and why the West is copying the wrong half of what it thinks it sees
 • Dave Deek
Dead Malls and Dying Downtowns Are the Best Places to Build (Local) State Capacity
Commercial decline isn't just a zoning/urbanism problem, it is also a governance problem. The cities that figure this out will be able to do everything…
 • Dave Deek
Alchemy and Machinery: What Apple's Steve Jobs Can Teach Pronatalists
Why Fertility Policy Fails as Components and Compounds as a System
 • Dave Deek
Accessory Commercial Units (ACUs): The Alchemy of Turning Suburbs Into Walkable Neighborhoods
Austin's March 2026 ACU vote, the ADU playbook extended to commerce, and what it means for the next decade of zoning reform.
 • Dave Deek
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