Hey, #Toronto! TOMORROW (Sept 16) I'm launching "Chokepoint Capitalism," @Rgibli's and my new book about unrigging creative labour markets. I'll be at @TypeBooks in the Junction at 7PM. Tell your friends!
It's the LAST DAY for my kickstarter for a DRM-free audiobook of Chokepoint Capitalism, @rgibli's and my book about how tech- and entertainment monopolies rip off artists, and how to unrig labor markets:
My book "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism" is a critique of Big Tech connecting conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies (proposing a way to deal with both) is now out in paperback:
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, and others) are for sale all over the net, but I sell 'em too, and when you buy 'em from me, I earn twice as much and you get books with no DRM and no license "agreements."
My first picture book is out! It's called Poesy the Monster Slayer and it's an epic tale of bedtime-refusal, toy-hacking and monster-hunting, illustrated by Matt @MCRockefeller. It's the monster book I dreamt of reading to my own daughter.
If you're a @Medium subscriber, you can read these essays - as well as previews of upcoming magazine columns and early exclusives on doctorow.medium.com.
My latest Medium column is "Sound Money: The best money is social, not personal"
If you prefer a newsletter, subscribe to the plura-list, which is also ad- and tracker-free, and is utterly unadorned save a single daily emoji. Today's is "🧙🏿". Suggestions solicited for future emojis!
The problem with good news in the real world is that it's *messy*. Neat happy endings are for novels, not the real world, and that goes double for the climate emergency.
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Let's take a sec here and notice something *genuinely great* happening in the US government: the @CFPB's stunning, unbroken streak of *major*, muscular victories over the forces of corporate corruption.
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Look, no one wants to kick Big Tech to the curb more than I do, but, also: it's *good* that Google indexes the news so people can find it, and it's *good* that Facebook provides forums where people can talk about the news.
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It's not news if you can't find it. It's not news if you can't talk about it. We don't call information you can't find or discuss "news" - we call it "secrets."
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Noted anti-capitalist agitator Adam Smith had it right: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
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Despite being a raving commie loon, Smith's observation was so undeniably true that regulators, policymakers, and economists couldn't help but acknowledge that it was true.
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Corruption is a system of concentrated gains and diffused costs: cheaters make a lot of money, and their victims each lose a little. The cheater has a much larger pool of money to spend on keeping the scam going, and the victims need to pay *again* to fight the cheater.
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Actually, it's worse. The victim pays once when they are cheated, then, they pay a second time (in time and/or money) when they fight back against the cheater.
But in order to fight back effectively, the victims need to band together.
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