To be a billionaire is to be a solipsist – to secretly believe that (most) other people don't really exist – otherwise, how could you live with the knowledge that your farcical wealth and power springs from the agony you have inflicted on whole populations?
Pluralistic: The billionaires aren’t OK (24 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Billionaires don't think we're real. How could they? How could you inflict the kind of vast misery that generates billions of dollars while still feeling even a twinge of empathy for the sufferer in your extractive enterprise. No wonder Elon Musk calls us "NPCs":
Pluralistic: Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth (23 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The only way to truly billionaire-proof the internet is to a) abolish billionaires and b) abolish the system that allows people to become billionaires. Short of that, any levees we build will need constant tending, reinforcement, and re-evaluation.
Pluralistic: Defense (of the internet) (from billionaires) in depth (23 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The only way to truly billionaire-proof the internet is to a) abolish billionaires and b) abolish the system that allows people to become billionaires. Short of that, any levees we build will need constant tending, reinforcement, and re-evaluation.
Pluralistic: They’re just trying to earn a buck (07 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Life as a prisoner of the neoliberal mind palace must suck: it's a world where every person who suffers under predatory business practices is a "consumer" who has "revealed a preference" for being screwed:
Pluralistic: Billionaire-proofing the internet; Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 5) (14 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
During the Napster wars, the record labels seriously pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.
Pluralistic: Billionaire-proofing the internet; Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 5) (14 Jan 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
During the Napster wars, the record labels seriously pissed off millions of internet users when they sued over 19,000 music fans, mostly kids, but also grannies, old people, and dead people.
Pluralistic: Millionaire on billionaire violence (10 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
For the past year, I've been increasingly fascinated by a political mystery: how has antitrust enforcement become a global phenomenon after spending 40-years in a billionaire-induced coma?
Pluralistic: Machina economicus (14 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
"Homo economicus" is the hypothetical "perfectly economically rational" person that economic models often assume us all to be, despite the fact that we are demonstrably not perfectly rational.
Pluralistic: Social media without socializing (19 Jan 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
From the earliest days of social media, social media bosses have been at war with sociability. To create a social media service is to demarcate legitimate and illegitimate forms of sociability. It's a monumental act of hubris, really.
Pluralistic: Every complex ecosystem has parasites (24 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Patrick "patio11" McKenzie is a fantastic explainer, the kind of person who breaks topics down in ways that stay with you, and creep into your understanding of other subjects, too. Take his 2022 essay, "The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero":
Pluralistic: End-stage capitalism (04 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually fail, torn apart by its own contradictions. He called the bourgeoisie, who epitomized these contradictions, capitalism's "grave diggers":
Pluralistic: Bankruptcy is very, very good (17 Jun 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
There's a truly comforting sociopathy snuggled inside capitalism ideology: if markets are systems for identifying and rewarding virtue, ability and value, then anyone who's failing in the system is actually unworthy, not unlucky; and that means the winners are not just lucky (and certainly not merely selfish), but actually the best and they owe nothing to their social inferiors apart from what their own charitable impulses dictate.
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Continue reading "Pluralistic: Bonta sold us out to Trump's oligarchs (22 Sep 2026)"
Pluralistic: No one wants to read your AI slop (02 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Everyone knows (or should know) that as fascinating as your dreams are to you, they are eye-glazingly dull to everyone else. Perhaps you have a friend or two who will tolerate you recounting your dreams at them (treasure those friends), but you should never, ever presume that other people want to hear about your dreams.
Pluralistic: Metabolizing the theory of “political capitalism” (06 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
It's a strange fact that the more sophisticated and polished a theory gets, the simpler it tends to be. New theories tend to be inspired by a confluence of many factors, and early attempts to express the theory will seek to enumerate and connect everything that seems related, which is a lot.
Pluralistic: The far right grows through “disaster fantasies” (25 Nov 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
The core of the prepper fantasy: "What if the world ended in the precise way that made me the most important person?" The ultra-rich fantasize about emerging from luxury bunkers with an army of mercs and thumbdrives full of bitcoin to a world in ruins that they restructure using their "leadership skills."