[Plura-list] Trump's electoral equilibrium; Trump billed the White House $3 per glass of water; Trustbusting Google

[Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

* Trump's electoral equilibrium: Slugs voting for salt.

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

* Trustbusting Google: My Daily Beast editorial.

* Podcasting part 21 of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town: "A
glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read."

* This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing
projects, current reading

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🕛 Trump's electoral equilibrium

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.

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_q2LBA38NI

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.

A transformative politician who turns out the base also flushes out
establishment opposition: lavishly funded smear campaigns that suppress
your own voter turnout as a necessary cost of heading off
voter-pleasing, plute-punishing policies.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/24/mike-bloomberg-prepares-media-blitz-against-bernie-sanders.html

This "demoralize the other side's voters" game is a race to the bottom.
It predates Trump, though, as is his method, Trump accelerated it. He
took the lid off the salt-shaker and demanded that his slugs vote for a
gush, not a sprinkle.

There's something seriously cult-creepy about the maso-fascism of
Trump's GOP, where deliberately inhaling virus droplets is a sign of
loyalty and being hospitalized for exposure after a Nebraska rally is a
badge of honor.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/28/trumpcicles/#omaha

Fool me twice we don't get fooled again: the crowds of stranded
vulnerable people after Trump's Georgia rally last night, hitching rides
with strangers in sealed vehicles, huddled on the ground for warmth -
they must have suspected this possibility.

https://twitter.com/JulieNBCNews/status/1323142004256157696

It's a Trumpian innovation: not just frightening your base with
boogeyman tales about the other guy, but also inspiring them to eternal
cultlike loyalty by performatively abusing them, even killing some of
them. That may scare some off, but the remainder are bone-loyal.

If you've stuck by your guy after he invited you to a ratlicking party
and then left you to die of exposure at the end of a lonely country
road; then no rape scandal, no tax return, no unjust enrichment leak
will budge you from your position.

You've drunk the bleach.

That's why it's such a goddamned nailbiter of an election. As Nate
Silver reminds us, it's not just that Trump has been volubly signalling
his intention to steal the election - there's a (slim) chance he could
actually just *win*.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/im-here-to-remind-you-that-trump-can-still-win/

Winning the popular election is basically impossible (<1%), but that's
not how the GOP wins, anyway. The Dems have won 7 out of the last 8
federal popular-vote tallies. But Trump could very well carry the
Electoral College.

Silver points to data showing that Biden's gains are coming from
Republicans who are sick of Trump, not Democrats who sat out the 2016
election but decided to cast a vote this time around.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/12/upshot/polls-wisconsin-michigan-election.html

These GOP Biden voters are slugs who used to vote for salt-sprinkle, but
draw the line at maso-fascism, the lidless salt-cellar free-pour.

The Dems who sat out 2016 and plan to sit out 2020 are turkeys who are
done voting for Christmas, no matter how bad the other guy is.

"The other guy's worse" electoral strategy was always going to reach a
breaking point. Eventually, politicians *have* to offer us something to
vote *for*, not *against*.

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🕛 Trump billed the White House $3 per glass of water

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.

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:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/context/mar-a-lago-club-billing-from-2018-visit-of-japanese-prime-minister-shinzo-visit/c9c920f0-2716-4bbb-8e87-011e53dda322/

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.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ballrooms-candles-and-luxury-cottages-during-trumps-term-millions-of-government-and-gop-dollars-have-flowed-to-his-propertiesmar-a-lago-charged-the-government-3-apiece-for-glasses-of-water-for-trump-and-the-japanese-leader/2020/10/27/186f20a2-1469-11eb-bc10-40b25382f1be_story.html

Trump's critics are careful to document his lies, but they're less vocal
about his truths. When Trump said that the US government was a grift, he
wasn't lying. When he said he knew how it worked, he wasn't lying.

When he said that the political establishment was playing the people for
suckers, he wasn't lying.

The fact that he was *obviously* going to worsen these problems wasn't
as material to some voters as the fact that he was finally saying
something they knew to be true.

Four years later, he's proved himself right, over and over again, and
whatever happens this week, he's unlikely to face meaningful
consequences for his crimes.

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🕛 Trustbusting Google

Today, The Daily Beast 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.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-justice-department-finally-takes-on-google-and-the-danger-of-monopolies

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.

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 five giant websites filled with
screenshots of text from the other four.

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

There was good reason for that assumption, of course. If you got online
in the 1980s, then your modem connected to phone lines operated by
post-AT&T-breakup; "Baby Bells."

The reason your PC ran DOS is that IBM was so traumatized by a 12-year
antitrust investigation that it allowed Microsoft to make its OS, rather
than risking more enforcement through vertical integration.

And the PC clones from dozens of new upstarts were only possible because
IBM didn't pursue the then-tiny company Phoenix for cloning its ROMs,
again, out of fear of a rerun of its antitrust trauma.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

When Microsoft came to dominate 95% of the desktop, the DoJ stepped in
again to punish it, and if they failed in their breakup bid, at least
they cowed the Beast of Redmond so that it stopped killing startups the
way it had with Netscape, allowing Google to rise.

What we didn't understand was that Ronald Reagan had gutshot US
antitrust enforcement and these were its last gasps, as it bled out over
two decades.

We didn't understand how thoroughly Reagan's court sorcerer, Robert
Bork, had transformed the consensus on monopolies.

We didn't understand that every president that came after Reagan, right
up to today, would continue to encourage monopolization under cover of
the doctrine of Robert Bork, creating a world where every industry has
collapsed into oligarchy.

* Five publishers

* Four studios

* Three labels

* Two brewers

* One eyewear company

and falling.

Which is why the federal Google antitrust action is exciting - not
merely because the complaint threads the impossible narrow eye of Robert
Bork's needle for anti-monopoly enforcement; but because it made so many
people recognize that getting Google for search dominance is like
getting Capone on tax-evasion. The pretense that monopolies are good,
actually, is wearing so thin that even its beneficiaries are doubting it.

One area that interests me with my digital-rights-activist hat on is how
monopoly changed the fortunes of tech workers. Back when there was
competition in the industry, tech workers had a stake in unfettered tech
industry growth.

But monopolization created the investors' "kill zone": the areas
adjacent to Big Tech's walled gardens that no one will invest in,
recognizing that Big Tech can simply obliterate any competitor in these
areas.

That leaves Big Tech to enjoy double-digit year-on-year growth without
having to endure what Peter Thiel calls "inefficient" competition. It
also means that tech workers don't realistically dream of doing to
Google what Google did to Yahoo.

The best they can hope for is to do a fake "startup" that's actually
aimed at "acqui-hire" - an acquisition for the sole purpose of hiring a
team that has proven it can field a product. The startup's product is
flushed, and the VCs get a commission in the form of a buyout.

Instead of building an empire or "making a dent in the universe," tech
workers are promised a well-funded retirement, mini-kitchen kombucha on
tap, and free massages on Wednesdays.

The path into the tech industry generally starts with the heady rush of
empowerment that comes from writing code and using networks to share it,
and to find communities of likeminded people. The rush of
self-determination and agency.

But monopolists thrive by moving risk off their balance sheets and onto
those of their suppliers, users and customers - by confiscating and
hoarding agency and self-determination.

Techies who fell in love with the experience of technological agency now
spend every hour God sends taking it away from others. I think that this
- along with other fracture lines - is behind so many of the moral
reckonings we're seeing from tech workers.

Tech Solidarity, Tech Won't Build It, No Tech For ICE, the googler
walkout, etc - techies are confronting their role in technological
dystopia, and they are flexing their muscle. It's a gorgeous thing to
behold.

My latest novel, ATTACK SURFACE, is a Little Brother sequel for those
techies - a story of moral reckoning with complicity in technological
oppression. It came out a couple weeks ago, and I've heard from a lot of
tech workers with whom it resonated.

https://craphound.com/category/attacksurface/

So many activists, security researchers, human rights cyberlawyers and
ethical hackers tell me that their careers started when they read the
first two Little Brother novels. Today, it feels like they're finally
getting the reinforcements they need.

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🕛 Podcasting part 21 of Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

This week on my podcast, part 21 of my reading of my 2006 novel "Someone
Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town," a novel Gene Wolfe called "a
glorious book unlike any book you’ve ever read."

https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/11/01/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-21/

Here's the previous installments:

https://craphound.com/podcast/?s=%22someone%20comes%22

Here's my podcast feed:

https://craphound.com/podcast/

and here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet
Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://ia801506.us.archive.org/31/items/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_366/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_366_-_Someone_Comes_to_Town_Someone_Leaves_Town_021.mp3

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🕛 This day in history

#15yrsago Life-size working Operation Game costume
https://jackwilliambell.livejournal.com/86072.html

#10yrsago How I use the Internet when I’m playing with my kid
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/nov/02/cory-doctorow-children-and-computers

#10yrsago Bedtime Story: Supernatural thriller about the dark side of
“getting lost in a good book”
https://memex.craphound.com/2010/11/02/bedtime-story-supernatural-thriller-about-the-dark-side-of-getting-lost-in-a-good-book/

#10yrsago Duelling useless machines: a metaphor for polarized politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkgoSOSGrx4

#10yrsago The Master Switch: Tim “Net Neutrality” Wu explains what’s at
stake in the battle for net freedom
https://memex.craphound.com/2010/11/01/the-master-switch-tim-net-neutrality-wu-explains-whats-at-stake-in-the-battle-for-net-freedom/

#5yrsago America’s a rigged carnival game that rips off the poor to
fatten the rich https://robertreich.org/post/132363519655

#5yrsago As America’s middle class collapses, no one is buying stuff
anymore
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-disappearing-middle-class-is-threatening-major-retailers-2015-10

#5yrsago Chrome won’t trust Symantec-backed SSL as of Jun 1 unless they
account for bogus certs
https://security.googleblog.com/2015/10/sustaining-digital-certificate-security.html

#5yrsago Kim Stanley Robinson’s “Aurora”: space is bigger than you think
https://memex.craphound.com/2015/11/02/kim-stanley-robinsons-aurora-space-is-bigger-than-you-think/

#1yrago Suppressed internal emails reveal that the IRS actively helped
tax-prep giants suppress Free File
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-tried-to-hide-emails-that-show-tax-industry-influence-over-free-file-program

#1yrago Airbnb’s easily gamed reputation system and poor customer
service allow scammers to thrive
https://www.vice.com/en/article/43k7z3/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on-airbnb

#1yrago Chicago teachers declare victory after 11-day strike
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/31/chicago-teachers-strike-union-tentative-agreement-makeup-days/4106271002/

#1yrago Toronto approves Google’s surveillance city, despite leaks
revealing Orwellian plans
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sidewalk-labs-waterfront-toronto-quayside-vote-1.5342294

#1yrago Report from a massive Chinese surveillance tech expo, where
junk-science “emotion recognition” rules
https://twitter.com/suelinwong/status/1190194625572569093

#1yrago My review of Sandworm: an essential guide to the new, reckless
world of “cyberwarfare”
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-11-01/sandworm-andy-greenberg-cybersecurity

#1yrago Blizzard’s corporate president publicly apologizes for bungling
players’ Hong Kong protests, never mentions Hong Kong
https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20944022/blizzard-blizzcon-hearthstone-china-hong-kong-response-j-allen-brack

_,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,__,.-'~'-.,_

🕛 Colophon

Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism
(https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/), Boing Boing (https://boingboing.net/).

Currently writing: My next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel
about truth and reconciliation. Friday's progress: 525 words (79380 total).

Currently reading: Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

Latest podcast: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town (part 20)
https://craphound.com/news/2020/10/25/someone-comes-to-town-someone-leaves-town-part-20/

Upcoming appearances:

* How to Fix the Internet/Reboot 2020, Nov 9,
https://www.rebootconference.org/day-two

* Cyberterrorists, Post-Apocalyptic Landscapes, and
Were-Pomeranians/Texas Book Festival, Nov 12,
https://www.texasbookfestival.org/events/cyberterrorists-post-apocalyptic-landscapes-and-were-pomeranians-new-in-speculative-fiction/

* Let's Talk About Influence/Designthinkers, Nov 16,
https://www.designthinkers.com/week-2/strategy-lets-talk-about-influence

* Shaping the Digital Future Summit/Kaspersky, Nov 17, details TBD

* Misinformation and Disinformation in Science Fiction and Fantasy/LITA,
Nov 17, details TBD

* Keynote, Data Natives, Nov 18, https://datanatives.io/tickets/

* Keynote, Cologne Futures, Nov 20, details TBD

* Keynote, Cybersummit 2020, Nov 26 https://www.cybera.ca/cyber-summit-2020/

* Beaverbrook Lecture: How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, Nov 30,
https://www.mcgill.ca/maxbellschool/channels/event/2020-beaverbrook-annual-lecture-part-ii-cory-doctorow-325538

* Keynote, NISO Plus, Feb 22-25,
https://niso.plus/cory-doctorow-to-keynote-at-niso-plus-2021/

Recent appearances:

* Author Stories Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxSPZn8EGTE

* The Gould Standard:
https://www.glenngould.ca/thegouldstandard/#cory-doctorow

* Attack Surface: A Reckoning
https://draxfiles.com/2020/10/26/show-278-attack-surface-a-reckoning/

Latest book:

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone
technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political
cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution
and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies
* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet
analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a
solution.
https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new
introduction by Edward Snowden:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies
here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime,
gender, and kicking ass. Order here:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed
copy here:
https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1562/_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer.html.

This work 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):

Pluralistic.net

Newsletter (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://pluralistic.net/plura-list

Mastodon (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://mamot.fr/web/accounts/303320

Twitter (mass-scale, unrestricted, third-party surveillance and
advertising):

https://twitter.com/doctorow

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 195 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mail.flarn.com/pipermail/plura-list/attachments/20201102/0974bc5e/attachment.sig>