More from @doctorow

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

2 Nov

Today's Twitter threads (a thread).

Inside: Trump's electoral equilibrium; Trump billed the White House $3 per glass of water; Trustbusting Google; Podcasting part 21 of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town; and more!

Archived at: pluralistic.net/2020/11/02/unb…

#Pluralistic

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https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1323279588345065478

Trump's electoral equilibrium: Slugs voting for salt.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1323279588345065478

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1323284278508048385

Trump billed the White House $3 per glass of water: Keeping his campaign promises.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1323284278508048385

Read 24 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

2 Nov

@thedailybeast

Today, @thedailybeast published "The Justice Department Finally—Finally!—Takes on Google and the Danger of Monopolies," my op-ed on tech antitrust and its connection to the digital rights movement.

thedailybeast.com/the-justice-de…

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I'm in my 19th year as a digital rights activist, and while there's a vogue of accusing the movement of being blind to the possibilities of techo-dystopia, that's a revisionist history. You don't devote your life to the cause if you think it's automatically going to be great.

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https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

But there was a blind-spot: the assumption that antitrust action would maintain the dynamism, opportunity and variety of the early commercial internet, keeping it from devolving into 5 giant websites filled with screenshots of text from the other 4.

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Read 23 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

2 Nov

Remember the 2016 campaign when Trump kept telling us that

a) The government was hopelessly corrupt, sending vast fortunes to gouging profiteers and beltway bandits; and

b) He knew how it worked because he was really good at it?

He was telling the truth, on both counts.

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Here's the invoice Trump's Mar-a-Lago sent to the White House after he held a state dinner with (then-)Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2018:

washingtonpost.com/context/mar-a-…

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The bill breakdown shows Trump billed the US taxpayer $3 for each glass of water served that night.

Trump's extracted at least $8.1m via price-gouging that he was on both side of - Trump, Inc billing Pres. Trump, who signed off on the expenses.

washingtonpost.com/politics/ballr…

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Read 6 tweets

Cory Doctorow #BLM

@doctorow

2 Nov

The equilibrium in US elections is a balance of:

* pleasing rich people (who give party figures sinecures via consulting/speaking/think tank fees) and;

* terrifying the base into turning out by pointing out how awful the other guy is, what with all his plute-osculating.

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A feature of this equilibrium is that the unfitness of the other side is a gift to your own side. The worse Trump is, the more establishment-friendly the Dem candidate can be.

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In other words, Trump needs to get slugs to vote for salt and Biden needs to get turkeys to vote for Christmas, and the optimal way to do that is by pointing fingers at the other guy. That way, you don't have to promise voter-pleasing policies that upset the donor class.

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Read 14 tweets