Today's links
- Where did the money go? Turning a mountain of (their) money into a pile of (your) money.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Revolutionary Colossus; T-Mobile CEO v EFF; Broadband isn't gasoline.
- Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Where did the money go? (permalink)
America is trudging through its third consecutive K-shaped recovery (an economic rally where the rich get richer and everyone else gets poorer). The rich have never been richer, and the debt-fueled consumption that kept the economy going is tapering down to a trickle.
This isn't down to the iron laws of economics or the great forces of history. It's because we made rules that let rich people steal from everyone else, including local, state and federal tax authorities, and also workers, customers and suppliers (and society at large). From junk fees to wage theft to greedflation, politicians have thumbed the scales in favor of scumbags who drain the wealth of workers and remit it to parasites.
These crooks and hustlers keep coming up with ways to squeeze a few more drops out of us. They come up with gimmicks like buy now/pay later (and then slam us with massive fees when we can't pay later), or margin-based gambling on cryptocurrency or "prediction markets," both of which are crooked poker tables where you are always the sucker and the house always wins.
The Trump administration didn't invent the idea of government-supported scams and hustles, but they sure supercharged it. Trump rips off his supporters like crazy – as anyone who's long on $TRUMPcoin knows – and surrounds himself with "businessmen" notorious for scamming workers, customers, and the government itself.
But even as Trump throws his support behind hustlers and con artists, he's also backing debt-collectors, whether they're chasing student debt, medical debt, or the spiraling penalties for missing the fourth payment on your Klarna.
Broadly, these are the two industries in America now: scammers who put Americans into debt, and industries who torment Americans into paying the debt. And while these two industries represent a moral crisis for the nation, they also represent an economic crisis, because they are at irreconcilable odds with one another.
If you're in the business of scamming Americans so they go into debt, you want your suckers to have money (so they can give it to you). But if you're in the business of collecting the losses that Americans incur at the hands of scammers, then you're at odds with those scammers themselves – every dollar you collect on the debt from the last scam is a dollar that can't be lost to the next scam.
This is what gave us the Great Financial Crisis: scumbag bankers tricked people into taking out unsustainable mortgages whose "teaser rates" would blow up after a couple years to levels that the borrower couldn't possibly pay back. But the lenders didn't care, because they were only "loan originators" who could pass those loans off to "investors" via exotic financial instruments. These two groups had an irreconcilable conflict: the people making the loans could only keep their scam going so long as the people collecting the loans didn't demand repayment.
But these two groups – scammers and arm-breakers – aren't the only two groups in the economy. There's a third group that you might call, "People who want to make useful things that we like and pay for." This third group is at odds with both the scammers and the arm-breakers, because their potential customers are being tricked (by scammers) and bankrupted (by arm-breakers).
Say you want to go into business renting hotel rooms to people at reasonable rates. You're an honest sort, so you list your room prices right there on your site. But the scumbags you're competing with want to rip people off, so they list a lower price than yours, and then whack the customer with junk fees at check-in that make their room more expensive than yours.
What's more, the scumbags make so much money that they can bribe the handful of dominant travel sites (which are all owned by one of two massive private-equity backed rollups) to list their hotels ahead of yours. They might not like paying bribes – in fact, they probably hate it – but they're willing to part with some of that hard-won ripoff money to keep the money-machine going. Besides, they can make up the difference with more junk fees. Whaddya gonna do, walk away from your nonrefundable, prepaid reservation and try and get a last-minute booking in a strange city?
Societally speaking, the problem is that economic growth only comes from the third group. They're the ones inventing new categories of (useful) products and services that delight their customers and enrich their workers and shareholders (who then buy more things in the economy, keeping the virtuous cycle going).
This festering economic zit is finally coming to a head with AI, whose most profitable use is in predicting how much a vendor can charge you – or how little a boss can pay you – without you walking away from the table:
AI's most enthusiastic customers, meanwhile, are bosses who dream of firing most of their workers and using the ensuing terror to force down the wages of the remaining workers:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-wheel/#billionaire-solipsism
If the average American is a squeezed-flat toothpaste tube that's been drained of all its readily extractable contents, then AI is the scissors that slit the tube up the side so that the very last dregs can be scraped out.
As Anil Dash put it,
Those niceties that everybody loved, like great healthcare and decent benefits, were identified by the people running the big tech companies as âmarket inefficienciesâ which indicated some wealth was going to you that should have been going to them.
https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/06/500k-tech-workers-laid-off/
The scammer/arm-breaker economy is fundamentally extractive. When a private equity fund buys a company, sells off its assets, declares a special dividend and gives the proceeds to itself, and pronounces the company to have been "right-sized" because now it has to rent the things it used to own, they are setting that company up to fail. All it takes is one rent-shock or a couple bad quarters and a once-healthy business will fall over:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/23/spineless/#invertebrates
Looking at America, it's hard not to ask, "Where did all the money go?" Where did free state college tuition, excellent public libraries, public housing, transit, fully staffed national parks and air-traffic control towers all go? Why can't we fix the potholes? How is it that a country that once electrified itself from top to bottom and sea to sea can't figure out how to run fiber lines to the same roofs where all those power lines connect?
It's because the system is organized around cheaters and arm-breakers. The Heritage Foundation – architects of Trump's Project 2025 – were founded and funded by Jay Van Andel and Rich DeVos, the guys who made their billions running Amway, a pyramid scheme that was legalized by their pet Congressman, Gerry Ford, shortly after he became president:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/05/free-enterprise-system/#amway-or-the-highway
The nation's system has been colonized and is being operated by people whose institutional home was created by pyramid-scheme hucksters. Why doesn't Trump's administration care about scam ads on Twitter and Facebook that clean out the very same Boomers who voted him into office? Because Trump's ideological project was founded by actual, non-metaphorical, non-hyperbolic con artists.
That's where the money went. Smart people keep asking how Trump plans on stealing Venezuela's oil when the country is in a state of shambolic collapse and its people are starving? Who will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in new equipment when every dollar spent on capital will require a dollar for a gunman to keep it from being stolen and sold for food?
You could ask the same question about America. In a country where we've literally legalized bribery, who wants to invest in productive businesses?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX9Ej0L6rGk
America's crisis is the world's opportunity. A chaotic mess of cyberwarfare, trade war, and invasions means that America is no longer your ally or your trading partner – it's a threat.
To neutralize that threat, we must take away the money (and thus the power) of America's oligarchs. We start down that path by changing the international laws – passed at the insistence of the US over the past 25 years – that ban foreign tech companies from modifying America's tech products.
Once other countries' companies start producing the tools that let farmers fix their tractors, that let games publishers sell outside of the official ripoff app stores, that let merchants avoid the Amazon tax, they will not only reap billions of dollars, they will also create a market that favors good products, rather than scams:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
America's largest companies have amassed trillions by robbing Americans (first) and then everyone else (once the US trade rep got laws passed that prevented non-US tech companies from making defensive products). The project of the next ten years is to convert those trillions to billions (in profits for companies that disenshittify America's defective technology – and in savings for people who use those tools to escape America's scam economy).
The beneficiaries of this program aren't limited to the investors in foreign tech companies, nor their overseas customers. Americans will also benefit from this technology, because Americans were the first victims of the US scam economy. Everyday Americans pay the app tax, the Amazon tax, the streaming tax, the Apple tax, the Google tax, the Microsoft tax. Supply Americans with the digital arms to resist these corporate raids, and they will stage a tax revolt (a thing that Americans are remarkably good at).
Escaping oligarchy, escaping the climate emergency, escaping economic desperation: these goals require doing things and making things. They require real products and services, they require real infrastructure and tools. By and large people would rather have real things than scams.
Ponzi America is breaking down. It's run out of suckers.
We just can't afford to structure our economy like an Amway downline anymore. We never could.
(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)
Hey look at this (permalink)
- what particularity is required when an ad campaign has zillions of possibly algorithmic variants? https://tushnet.blogspot.com/2026/01/what-particularity-is-required-when-ad.html
-
The Narco-Terrorist Elite https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/narco-terrorist-elite-rubio-south-america-iran-contra/
-
Section 230 Doesnât Cover Elon Muskâs Ass When It Comes to Deepfake Abuse, Senator Says https://gizmodo.com/section-230-doesnt-cover-elon-musks-ass-when-it-comes-to-deepfake-abuse-senator-says-2000706234
-
Mamdani Targets Junk Fees and Hidden Charges in Two Executive Orders https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/nyregion/mamdani-affordability-consumer-protections.html
-
500,000 tech workers have been laid off since ChatGPT was released https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/06/500k-tech-workers-laid-off/
Object permanence (permalink)
#10yrsago Caught lying by an EFF investigation, T-Mobile CEO turns sweary https://www.theverge.com/2016/1/7/10733298/john-legere-binge-on-lie
#10yrsago Code for Americaâs year in civic tech https://web.archive.org/web/20160811012751/https://www.codeforamerica.org/blog/2015/12/22/this-year-in-civic-tech-2015-in-review/
#10yrsago Flying while trans: still unbelievably horrible https://trans-fusion.blogspot.com/2016/01/traveling-while-trans-false-promise-of.html
#10yrsago Resilience over rigidity: how to solve tomorrowâs computer problems today https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-wicked-problems-resilience-through-sensing/
#10yrsago Dear Comcast: broadband isnât gasoline https://www.techdirt.com/2016/01/07/with-fixed-costs-fat-margins-comcasts-broadband-cap-justifications-are-total-bullshit/
#10yrsago High-rez trip through Floridaâs Haunted Mansion with a low-light filter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKVd-xwxgJs
#5yrsago Revolutionary Colossus https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/07/revolutionary-colossus/#1776
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Denver: Enshittification at Tattered Cover Colfax, Jan 22
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cory-doctorow-live-at-tattered-cover-colfax-tickets-1976644174937 -
Colorado Springs: Guest of Honor at COSine, Jan 23-25
https://www.firstfridayfandom.org/cosine/ -
Ottawa: Enshittification at Perfect Books, Jan 28
https://www.instagram.com/p/DS2nGiHiNUh/ -
Toronto: Enshittification and the Age of Extraction with Tim Wu, Jan 30
https://nowtoronto.com/event/cory-doctorow-and-tim-wu-enshittification-and-extraction/ -
Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/ -
Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2
Recent appearances (permalink)
- A post-American, enshittification-resistant internet (39c3)
https://media.ccc.de/v/39c3-a-post-american-enshittification-resistant-internet -
Enshittification with Plutopia
https://plutopia.io/cory-doctorow-enshittification/ -
"can't make Big Tech better; make them less powerful" (Get Subversive)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1EzM9_6eLE -
The Enshitification Life Cycle with David Dayen (Organized Money)
https://www.buzzsprout.com/2412334/episodes/18399894 -
Enshittificaition on The Last Show With David Cooper:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/256-the-last-show-with-david-c-31145360/episode/cory-doctorow-enshttification-december-16-2025-313385767
Latest books (permalink)
- "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025
-
"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ -
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
-
"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
-
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
-
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
-
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
-
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Upcoming books (permalink)
- "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026
-
"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026
-
"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026
-
"The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1003 words today, 2023 total)
- "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
-
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
-
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
How to get Pluralistic:
Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
https://pluralistic.net/plura-list
Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):
Medium (no ads, paywalled):
Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
Tumblr (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and advertising):
https://mostlysignssomeportents.tumblr.com/tagged/pluralistic
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
ISSN: 3066-764X
Zes jaar lang was kater Simba uit Assen vermist, totdat zijn baasje op oudjaarsdag een telefoontje krijgt van de dierenambulance dat Simba is gevonden. In de buurt van zijn oude huis. Dat schrijft het Dagblad van het Noorden
Simba raakte zes jaar geleden vermist toen hij bijna een jaar oud was. Zijn baasje is intussen twee keer verhuisd, maar dankzij zijn chip is Simba nu weer 'thuis'.
Hoe doen katten dat?
We weten dat niet helemaal. Katten die na lange tijd tóch weer thuis opduiken, doen dat waarschijnlijk door een combinatie van geur, een soort intern kompas en heel goed onthouden routes en oriëntatiepunten. Het verschijnsel is deels verklaarbaar, maar niet volledig; er blijft altijd een stukje mysterie over hoe sommige katten het zó lang en zó ver volhouden.
Katten hebben een uitstekend oriĂ«ntatievermogen en onthouden routes, hoeken, specifieke bomen, hagen en gebouwen, waardoor ze op âautomatische pilootâ naar bekende gebieden kunnen teruglopen.â
Er zijn aanwijzingen dat katten, net als sommige vogels, gevoelig zijn voor het aardmagnetisch veld; dat zou hun zogenaamde homing-instinct kunnen verklaren, al is dat wetenschappelijk nog niet hard bewezen.â
.
De Franse president Emmanuel Macron waarschuwt dat de Verenigde Staten zich afwenden van bondgenoten en zich onttrekken aan de internationale regels. "Multilaterale instellingen functioneren steeds minder effectief", verklaarde hij in een toespraak voor Franse ambassadeurs.
"De Verenigde Staten zijn een gevestigde macht, maar een die zich geleidelijk van enkele bondgenoten afkeert en zich losmaakt van internationale regels die het land tot voor kort nog promootte", aldus de Franse president.
De waarschuwing volgt op een tumultueuze week in de internationale politiek. De VS namen de Venezolaanse leider Maduro gevangen, sloten militaire middelen niet uit om Groenland in handen te krijgen en maakten bekend dat ze zich terugtrekken uit meer internationale organisaties.
Die ontwikkelingen leiden internationaal tot onrust. Macron waarschuwde voor het verdelen van de wereld door wereldmachten en zei dat Europa de eigen belangen moet beschermen.
WASHINGTON (ANP) - De Amerikaanse regering voert gesprekken met de internationale grondstoffenhandelaren Vitol en Trafigura over het op de markt brengen van olie uit Venezuela. Dat meldden bronnen aan persbureau Reuters. Naar verluidt is er vrijdag een ontmoeting van regeringsfunctionarissen met vertegenwoordigers van Vitol en Trafigura in het Witte Huis. Die dag komen ook topbestuurders van Amerikaanse oliebedrijven langs in het Witte Huis.
Vitol en Trafigura waren in het verleden actief met de handel in olie uit Venezuela. De Europese handelsbedrijven kunnen de Verenigde Staten gaan helpen bij het op de wereldwijde oliemarkt brengen van Venezolaanse olie.
President Donald Trump heeft gezegd dat de VS voor lange tijd olie uit Venezuela zullen halen en de controle hebben over de verkoop. Om de verwaarloosde oliesector van Venezuela weer op te bouwen wil Trump hulp van oliebedrijven. Het Zuid-Amerikaanse land heeft de grootste oliereserves ter wereld.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Pakket- en boodschappenbezorgers geven aan dat de bezorging donderdag soepeler loopt dan de afgelopen dagen, maar kampen nog wel met achterstanden. Doordat het glad op de weg was, waren veel bestellingen vertraagd of werden volledig geannuleerd. Sommige diensten, zoals flitsbezorger Flink, gaan nog maar beperkt de weg op.
Omdat de weersomstandigheden, en daarmee gepaarde hinder, regionaal erg verschilden, zijn de achterstanden donderdag plaatselijk verschillend. "Bij het depot in Maastricht, bijvoorbeeld, zijn de problemen volledig opgeklaard. Maar in Joure zitten ze tot over hun oren in de pakketten", legt een woordvoerder van DPD uit. Ook PostNL herkent dit beeld.
De bezorgdiensten zeggen de weersomstandigheden de komende dagen nauwlettend in de gaten te houden omdat er weer winters weer wordt voorspeld. Veel verwachten dat komend weekend wederom "uitdagend" wordt.
UTRECHT (ANP) - NS rijdt vrijdag opnieuw met een afgeschaalde dienstregeling vanwege het winterse weer. Dit betekent dat op een aantal trajecten minder treinen rijden en reizigers vaker moeten overstappen en langer onderweg zijn. Ook kunnen treinen drukker zijn dan anders.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Bezitters van warmtepompen moeten deze dagen extra opletten. Als de buitenunit onder de sneeuw of het ijs zit, krijgt de warmtepomp te weinig lucht en kan deze het minder goed doen of zelfs helemaal niet meer, waarschuwt Techniek Nederland.
Hoe vaak dit al is misgegaan, kon een woordvoerder niet zeggen. Hij benadrukt dat warmtepompen in deze vorstperiode over het algemeen zonder problemen functioneren. "Maar zorg dat de buitenunit sneeuw- en vorstvrij blijft."
Een warmtepomp haalt zijn energie uit de buitenlucht, waarbij de lucht vrij moet kunnen circuleren. "In geval van sneeuw is het verstandig om de omgeving rondom de warmtepomp met de hand sneeuwvrij te maken", adviseert de installatiebrancheorganisatie.
Buitenunits te dicht bij een muur plaatsen kan ook problemen geven. De luchtstroom wordt dan mogelijk verstoord en de kou kan niet goed weg, waarschuwen de experts.
BRUSSEL (ANP) - De Europese Commissie heeft socialmediaplatform X opgedragen alle interne documenten en data over chatbot Grok tot zeker eind 2026 te bewaren. Dat liet een woordvoerder van de Commissie donderdag weten.
Grok is in opspraak omdat het per uur duizenden afbeeldingen maakt met AI van mensen die zonder hun toestemming zijn ontkleed. Het gaat ook om seksueel getinte afbeeldingen van kinderen die worden verspreid via X. Eerder noemde de Commissie dit "walgelijk" en "illegaal" en zei te gaan kijken naar de klachten.
Dat de Commissie X vraagt de documenten te bewaren, betekent nog niet dat er een officieel onderzoek is gestart naar naleving van EU-digitale wetgeving. "Dit is een boodschap aan een platform: bewaar je interne documenten, gooi ze niet weg, want we hebben twijfels over je naleving. En we moeten er toegang toe kunnen krijgen als we er expliciet om vragen", aldus de woordvoerder.
Frankrijk en Maleisië hebben al een onderzoek ingesteld naar Grok.
