Tonight (Apr 25) I'll be in #SanDiego for the launch of my new novel, *Red Team Blues*, at @MystGalaxyBooks, hosted by @_SarahGailey. Please come and say hi!
Yesterday's threads: How Goldman Sachs's "tax-loss harvesting" lets the ultra-rich rake in billions tax-free; Happy Independent Bookstore Day; and more!
My ebooks and audiobooks (from @torbooks, @HoZ_Books, @mcsweeneys, @BeaconPressBks et al) 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."
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.
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My latest Medium column is "A Collective Bargain: Workplace democracy is a training ground for true national democracy"
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!
Are you trying to wean yourself off Big Tech? You can read my work elsewhere, but it is now a #TwitterCrime to tell you how. Please visit my site, pluralistic.net, for links to find me on less-unhinged places (I can only imagine that my days here are numbered).
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Remember "#DeathPanels"? @SarahPalinUSA promised that #UniversalHealthcare was a prelude to a Stalinist nightmare where unaccountable bureaucrats decided who lived or died based on a cost-benefit analysis of the cost to keep you alive versus how much your life was worth.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Palin was right that any kind of healthcare rationing runs the risk of this kind of calculus, where we weight spending $10,000 to extend a young, healthy person's life by 40 years against $1,000 to extend an elderly, disabled person's life by a mere two years.
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Amazon is *very* proud of its #flywheel: first, they subsidized customers, luriing in sellers. Then they demanded lower prices, luring more buyers. With more customers, more sellers piled in. Faster the flywheel spins, creating the #EverythingStore:
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
The flywheel is everywhere - they even teach it in business-schools. But Amazon is not a reliable narrator. It doesn't tell the truth about the flywheel. To understand what's really going on with the flywheel, you have apply #enshittification to it.
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“My grandparents in the 1940s. They were married for 78 years until they died 12 days apart. ‘We love each other and we like each other. That’s all there is.’” atomicrobot.live/post/715537948…